


Harmless Error

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [30]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Legal Drama, Multi, motion practice universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 112,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3179024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>October: the tenth month in the year, retaining its name from the Latin for “eight.”  Also, a month when Jasper Sitwell risks some small part of himself (not that he’ll admit it) and Maria Hill acts on an impulse she’s usually better at controlling.</p><p>January: the first month of the year, taking its name from Janus, the god of doorways.  Also, a month when literally everything changes.</p><p>But then again, Janus is also the god of beginnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three Minutes (December 30)

**Author's Note:**

> As previously stated in other disclaimers: the following story is a work of fiction. I was a law student when I started this series, and most of my inspiration to start down this crazy path originated when I worked as an intern at an office not unlike the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
> 
> That said, any similarity in this story to real people, places, events, or cases is entirely accidental. Nothing in this story is based directly off my experience. At no time have I lifted real cases, scenarios, or people from my work life and deposited them into this fic, and I won’t be doing so.
> 
> Along those lines, too, please keep in mind: this is fiction. Although some of the law featured in this story is based on the real law of my jurisdiction, I have done no or very little additional research. Legal concepts may be oversimplified, under-nuanced, or simply wrong for the purpose of the narrative. Some details may be incorrect or omitted. Nothing in this story purports to be legal advice of any kind.
> 
> This story involves characters which first appeared in Motion Practice. Reading the rest of the stories for context is not required but may be helpful. This story will spoil the events of previous stories if you’ve not read them first.
> 
> Thank you as always to Jen and saranoh, who are the driving force behind this story in ways they probably do not even realize.
> 
> Also, as a side note, this fic will feature dynamic tags, and characters will be added as they appear to avoid spoilers for those who read update-to-update.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of December, Maria waits three minutes to discover something important—and terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In law, the term _harmless error_ is applied to errors that don’t affect the outcome of a case or trial. Basically, it means that the court or the parties screwed something up but that the result wouldn’t have been any different even if they hadn’t made that mistake.

On December 30, Maria sets her cell phone timer for three minutes, presses the start button, and walks out of her green-tiled hotel bathroom.

The only hotel in Samantha Wright’s one-stoplight town—the town that, for reasons that still boggle Maria’s mind, Phil picked as a wedding venue—offers only shoebox-sized rooms with next to no insulation and gaudy floral wallpaper straight out of a Victorian nightmare. Maria flops down onto the pink bedspread—embellished, naturally, with giant white gardenia-style flowers and spiraling vines—and tries desperately not to twist her hands together as she stares up at the ceiling. There’s a water stain directly above her pillows and a rough bit of replacement plaster just to the left of the window.

She studies the plaster spot until it blurs in her vision.

When she glances back down at her cell phone, exactly twenty seconds have passed.

She abandons her tiny, claustrophobic room and steps out into the hallway, a glory of off-white paint and garishly patterned carpeting fresh out of the seventies. A few long fingers of gray-white light poke out from under the only window’s dusty drapes, and Maria shoves her phone in her pocket as she heads in that direction. She’s not exactly sure what she’s expecting—a glimpse of a panoramic view poking out from between twenty years of caked-on grime and bird shit?—but she’s still somehow disappointed when all she’s able to see is the parking lot. 

She stares out at the rows of cars before she walks away and heads into the stairwell.

When she sits down on the landing, her eyes squinting against the harsh white of the emergency lights, she discovers that there’s two minutes and eighteen seconds remaining on her timer.

She shoves it back into her pocket.

She’d spent her whole morning pacing up and down the town’s sorry little Main Street, her eyes darting from one window display to another while she’d obsessively paced back and forth in front of the drug store. She’d tried to appear casual and cool, ducking into The Craft Barn to browse yarn with women whose sweatshirts proudly advertised them as _Seasoned Hookers_ (a crochet joke, apparently) and admiring ancient birdfeeders and washboards at Beverly’s Fine Antiques, but every time she’d stepped back into the street, her heart’d lodged into her throat. She’d finally sought a full half-hour solace in the consignment shop on a side street, trying on random tops and dresses while Bruno Mars crooned from the radio. She’d almost bought a sweater, so soft that it’d practically melted against her skin.

But then, she’d glanced in the mirror, realized how tightly it fit against her body, and abandoned it in the tiny dressing room stall.

The cup of coffee she’d drank in the diner across from the drug store tasted like ash, after that.

When she’d finally stepped back into the street, this time with a newfound determination to just suck it up and step through Corner Drug’s double doors, she’d almost literally collided with Phil’s sister Amy. The other woman’d squinted into the bright winter sun, her face transitioning quickly from surprised annoyance to a fond Coulson-family smile. 

“I thought most of Phil’s friends would be nursing a hangover this morning,” she’d said, her hands tucked into her coat pockets. “From the sounds of it, you all shut the hall down.”

Maria’d shrugged noncommittally. “I didn’t drink that much last night.”

Amy’d blinked. “Oh?”

She’d kicked herself, hard, before managing to force a tight smile. “Old bridesmaid habit I picked up after college,” she’d lied, her voice remarkably even. “Pour enough of your best girlfriends into their honeymoon suite, you learn to stay sober for the fireworks.”

Amy’d laughed a little at that, but something in her eyes—cunning, calm, scrutinizing eyes—had reminded Maria of Phil at his most suspicious. The coffee’d swum in her stomach, and they’d stared each other for a few beats too long before Amy’d asked, “Are you coming to dinner tonight?”

“Dinner?”

“At Sam and Joe’s. I know after-wedding brunches are more traditional, but the chances of Phil and Clint climbing out of bed before about five this afternoon are pretty slim.” Maria’d snorted a laugh at that, and Amy’d grinned right back. “You can’t miss out on Sam’s pork roast. Never repeat this to her, but it’s amazing, and you’ll regret your life choices if you don’t come.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want a life full of regret,” Maria’d replied dryly, and she’d ground her teeth into a smile while Amy’d laughed again.

Once Amy—her ponytail swinging merrily in the breeze like a character from _Pleasantville_ —had disappeared around the corner, Maria’d finally helped herself to one steadying breath and walked into the drug store. The bored teenager at the counter had barely glanced away from his cell phone as he’d rambled through the canned greeting (“Welcome to Corner Drugs, where good health is just around the corner!”), and Maria’d shoved her hands into her pockets as she’d trudged toward the back of the store. She’d dodged pleasant small-town strangers and a harried-looking stock boy before finally finding the “feminine health” aisle; even there, she’d wasted ten minutes reading the instructions on tampons and “self-warming personal lubricant” packages until she’d summoned up the nerve to buy what she’d come for.

She leans her head against the off-white stairwell wall as she glances at her cell phone again. Twelve seconds remain on the timer. She lets eleven of them tick away before she cancels the countdown altogether.

She stares at her phone’s home screen for a long time after that, memorizing the colors and shapes of all the different icons like she’s playing Memory with Phil’s little niece Clara. She barely recognizes that she’s opening up her list of text message conversations until she’s scrolling through the names there. Almost all the conversations predate the trip to Samantha Wright’s tiny town and sprawling farm—after all, nine-tenths of the people Maria cares about are in this very hotel, sleeping or fucking or corralling their children—but one boasts a time stamp from that very morning. She steels herself before she opens it, afraid that her fingers (or emotions) might decide to betray her.

She skips back through the most recent messages to find a conversation from the night before, when she’d stepped away from the dance floor at the wedding reception to fish her phone out of her bag.

 **Him:** _you’d better be dancing. if you’re not, I’m going to be disappointed._

 **Me:** _Who am I going to dance with? Stark?_

 **Him:** _one of the grooms?_

 **Me:** _You’ve obviously never tried to dance with Phil “Two Left Feet” Coulson or Clint “Got No Rhythm” Barton before._

 **Him:** _nope. because the only person I ever ask to dance at shit like that’s you._

She swipes her thumb along the screen, scrolling back through words she hardly remembers typing, anymore—promises for a very specific sort of dance, a thought that still pools hot and silky in the pit of her stomach. She reads them all, the text burning into her brain before she finally locks her phone and stands.

She’s supposed to be at the Wright farm in half an hour.

Instead, she wants to go home to Suffolk County and pretend the last few weeks never happened.

The hallway’s still empty when she reemerges from the stairwell, quiet as a mausoleum and twice as decrepit. She counts her steps as she heads back toward her room, an old, comforting habit she’s never quite shaken. She still remembers pacing around military bases as a kid, stomping through unfamiliar streets in restless boredom until her footsteps numbered in the hundreds or even the thousands. She’d lost herself in those moments—the breeze on her face, the shouts of unfamiliar children in the air—until whatever’d driven her from the house had settled back down into her bones as a dull ache. 

She’d hewn hurt into armor on walks like those.

Now, she stops halfway to her room to discover Amy Jimenez standing in the middle of the hall.

Her frizzy curls stick up in every direction, a tangled mass that’s barely controlled by the laws of physics, and Maria can’t help her fond little smile. She knows that Stark’s motley crew is spread out in two rooms on the second floor, far enough away that no disturbing sounds or sibling bicker-fights reverberate up to Maria’s fourth-floor shoebox. Amy, then, is an anomaly, a wild-haired wanderer with big brown eyes and—

Oh.

An expression of sheer terror on her face.

“You okay?” Maria asks. Her voice sounds suddenly foreign, tight and gentle in all the wrong places. 

Amy glances over her shoulder, her head bobbing uncertainty. “Tony needed Pepper to help do my hair, but nobody answered her door when I knocked.” The words tremble slightly, and the tight knot of worry that’s lived in Maria’s belly for the last few weeks loosens just enough to release a flood of unexpected sympathy. “I know Natasha stays with Pepper, but she left with Bruce to go to the farm, and—” 

“I can do your hair,” Maria says automatically. Amy blinks up at her, her Stark-like eyes suddenly wide with surprise, and Maria forces a tiny smile. “We’re both girls, right?” she asks with a little shrug. “I’m no Pepper, of course, but I figure between the two of us—”

“Tony can’t even make a ponytail,” Amy cuts in. “He leaves pieces out.”

Maria grins at her. “You want a hairdo that’ll make Tony cry, then?”

She’s not sure what’s cuter: Amy’s full-body wriggle, or the way that her grin almost overflows with unbridled glee. “ _Yes_ ,” she says emphatically, and she practically throws herself at Maria when Maria holds out her hand.

They end up cross-legged on Maria’s unmade hotel bed, chatting like teenagers at a slumber party while Maria tames the girl’s hair into a passable French braid. Amy babbles happily about a thousand different things, including Bruce’s attempt to mimic pinterest hairstyles with limited results (“Tony calls it mommy-daughter time,” Amy confides, “but Bruce isn’t a girl”), Miles’s dirty gym socks, and the Banner-Stark housecat. The longer they sit still, the more she wiggles, and Maria struggles to keep hold of all the wispy strands.

“I think he was crying,” Amy whispers at one point, twisting to glance back over her shoulder.

Maria gently nudges her head back around. “I can’t do your hair if you look at me,” she says gently, and Amy’s shoulders slump in disappointment. “And remind me, who was crying?”

“Billy.”

“Billy who?”

Amy heaves a sigh. “Teddy’s _boyfriend_ ,” she half-whines, and Maria bites down the edges of a smile. “Teddy only cries when he’s really sad or really, _really_ mad.”

Maria chuckles. “Anybody in particular make him mad?”

“Still mostly Billy.”

She delivers the line so perfectly deadpan that Maria nearly ruins her braid from laughing. Amy immediately lights up like a summer day, her grin as confident as it is endlessly proud. Maria wonders for a second what the Stark-and-Banner household must be like these days, overflowing as it is with emotional teenage boys and a girl who’s somehow already two-thirds Stark.

She ties off the braid with a hair elastic and also a ribbon stolen from the room’s basket of dusty lavender potpourri, and she grins when Amy spends a full minute twirling in front of the mirror in a clumsy attempt to admire her hair. “You do pretty hair like Uncle Steve,” she decides once she’s finished. “You should teach Bruce.”

Maria shakes her head. “I’m pretty sure that’s outside my area of expertise. You’d be better off asking Steve.”

Amy wrinkles her nose. “Last time I asked Uncle Steve, Tony made jokes about him and Bruce having sleepovers, so Uncle Steve said no.” Maria laughs a little at that, but Amy just keeps staring at her, her face surprisingly serious for a seven-year-old. “I think you should have a little girl,” she volunteers.

The last of Maria’s laugh dries up immediately. She swallows roughly, her jaw twitching as she clings desperately to the edges of her smile. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen,” she says quietly, her tone dark enough that Amy’s big grin disappears. “Not because there’s anything wrong with having a little girl,” she adds. “Little girls are great. It’s just not really my thing.”

“No?” Amy asks softly.

Maria shakes her head again. “No. Not for me, at least.”

Amy admires her reflection one last time before murmuring an awkward thank you, but she also clings to Maria’s hand like a lifeline as they walk together to the hotel’s main stairwell. Stark apparently meets his foster daughter on the third floor landing, because the echo of the girl’s skipping, jumping footfalls are quickly covered by him crowing over her “fancy and impossible to recreate” braid. Maria chuckles a little as she wanders back to her hotel room, but the last drops of her joy drain away once she’s locked the door behind her.

The tile in the tiny, antiseptic-scented bathroom is still seafoam green when she switches on the lights, and for a few seconds, she stands in front of the mirror and studies her own reflection. The light fixture’s scalloped sconces are frosted in a weird silver-gray color, and the light transforms her into a cartoonishly pink creature with dark, unfriendly circles under her eyes. She stares herself for a long moment—the lines of her body in her sweater, the outline of her belt buckle at her waist, the cut of her jeans—before she finally releases the breath she’s held for the last several days.

“You’re an idiot,” she tells the Maria Hill in the mirror.

And on the bathroom counter, a cheap piece of plastic balanced atop a flimsy cardboard box informs her that she’s pregnant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be accepting prompts for about 18 hours starting tomorrow morning (January 16). If you want to participate, come to my [tumblr](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com) and shout prompts at me. You know, if you're into that kind of thing. I'll be laying out the specifics of the prompt-fest in the morning.
> 
> In the meantime: welcome to Harmless Error, and I hope you enjoy your stay.


	2. October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In October, Jasper spends a weekend in a cabin, not that his friends understand the appeal. No, his friends are concerned about shit like his emotional well-being and his inability to separate physical acts with feelings. But his friends also encourage Lance Hunter to give relationship advice, so what the hell do they know?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to avoid confusion, this chapter steps back a few months from Chapter 1 as we work up to the events of December 30. For that reason, Chapter 2, 3, and 4 actually occur before Chapter 1, and Chapters 5 and later occur after. I'm sorry I did not add this note until earlier; I mentioned it on tumblr but forgot to put anything about it here. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my amazing beta-readers, saranoh and Jen, for working overtime on this story as it bubbles out of me at an alarming rate.

“Mother _fucker_.” 

The swear—the last in a long, proud stream—is accompanied by a full-body cringe, and James Rhodes, bastard that he is, immediately starts laughing. “It’s not fucking funny,” Jasper growls, and Rhodes rolls his eyes. “Seriously, I got bit by a dog. Do you know how many goddamn dogs don’t have their rabies tags on them? I found out today, and let me tell you: you’re lucky I’m not foaming at the mouth right now.”

“Except you didn’t just get bit by a dog,” Rhodes reminds him. He’s stretched out at the district attorney reception desk, his body draped over the chair like he’s secretly a Rhodes-shaped blanket. Jasper remembers draping, and he misses it already.

He also points his pen at Rhodes. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“You got bit by a dog—”

“I swear to Christ, I will uninvite you from our next ten nights out if you—”

“—in your _ass_.”

Rhodes cracks himself up all over again, and Jasper—mature adult all the way to his very core—flicks his pen at him. They’re the only two people in the reception area right now, but in a way, that’s a thousand times worse than sitting in the middle of a crowd. Unlike the rest of Jasper’s so-called friends, Rhodes knows when to tease the shit out of him and when to keep his mouth shut. Crowds mean respectful silence and private snickering.

When they’re alone, on the other hand—

“Don’t you have a building to patrol?” Jasper demands as Rhodes starts wheezing. “Because last I checked, you’re supposed to be the head of security, not a pain in my—”

He hesitates, and Rhodes snorts. “Ass?” Jasper glares at him, and he holds up his hands. “Okay, sorry. I shouldn’t be taking pleasure in your pain, even if it _is_ hilarious.”

“Says the guy who bitched for hours when I laughed at how he twisted his knee _mowing_.”

“You wanna relive the gopher conversation? Because I can relive it all day and night.” Jasper smacks Rhodes’s accusatory finger away with the back of his hand as he reaches for the pile of subpoenas he’s supposed to deliver today, sore ass and all. “And besides,” Rhodes adds, swiveling around in his chair a little, “the real tragedy was how it affected my love life.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “Who’s to say my dog bite won’t affect my love life?” he questions. Rhodes barely holds back his laugh, and Jasper abandons his stack of papers. By the time he crosses his arms over his chest, his buddy’s full-on snickering. “For all you know, my ass could be legendary. It could be the male equivalent of Kelis’s milkshake.”

Rhodes swallows a bark of laughter. “You’re really comparing your sorry ass to a bad nineties song?”

“It came out in 2003, and that’s not my point.” Rhodes presses his lips together, but it’s clear from his face that he’s struggling to contain himself. Jasper considers throwing a stapler at him, this time. “My point is that my ass is great. Women love my ass, and now, it’s damaged.”

“Based on, what, a poll of random women on the street?”

“Based on experience.”

Rhodes rolls his eyes. “The day you’ve got enough experience for somebody to actually vouch for your ass is the day I—” 

“Wow, and to think I was afraid I was about to interrupt some high-level discourse,” Maria Hill suddenly cuts in, and Jasper’s mouth dries up like the Sahara.

Rhodes swivels around faster than the speed of light, his face so apologetic that angels start to weep, but Jasper— Jasper hardly hears it, because he’s so busy studying Maria. She’s in her usual navy blue suit, her arms crossed under her breasts and her eyebrows almost in her hairline as Rhodes begs for forgiveness, but her eyes dance like she’s ten seconds from laughing. There’s color high on her cheeks, like maybe she just trudged all the way up the stairs, but the rest of her skin’s pale as porcelain.

Jasper almost forgets about the pain that’s radiating from his dog bite, he’s so busy watching her. Better yet, he swears she flicks her eyes his way and winks.

Angels might weep for Rhodes’s _yes ma’am, no ma’am, sorry ma’am_ goodness, but it’s still nothing when compared to Maria Hill. 

“Considering how often I’m subjected to tales of Phil and Clint’s supposedly mind-blowing sex life, I can’t be too concerned about your respective asses,” Maria finally cuts in. For a half second, Rhodes looks ready to correct her—it’s definitely the calm, sincere face before the _really, we were talking about Jasper’s ass and sex life_ storm—but he finally just purses his lips. Jasper credits himself with one very small victory. “But if you can stick around up here for a couple more minutes, I need to borrow Sitwell.”

Jasper blinks. “Me?” he asks.

“No, the other Sitwell in the room.” She rolls her eyes when he glances over his shoulder like he’s expecting one of his eight-million cousins. “Unless you’re too busy sorting through paperwork and discussing people’s asses.”

He shrugs. “I think I can fit you into my busy schedule,” he replies, and he’s proud to say that he only cringes a tiny bit as he forces himself out of his seat.

 _Kiss-ass_ , Rhodes mouths as he passes.

Jasper flips him off behind his back before trotting down the hallway after Maria.

Most of the time, the district attorney’s office reminds him of a cross between a circus and one of the really good seasons of _The West Wing_ : a distracting, noisy parade of color and sound that’s punctuated with occasional hallway walk-and-talks. He mostly loves the activity, never mind the promise of fresh coffee and random break room snacks, but sometimes, the constant press of bodies (clerks, interns, trial assistants, attorneys) leaves him feeling a little claustrophobic. On days like those, he usually grabs a stack of subpoenas and heads straight down to his car just to avoid the way his skin itches for privacy.

This afternoon, though, about a third of the office is out for some reason—conferences, sick babies, some big law school social event that even Sharon the Serious Intern can’t bring herself to miss—and Romanoff, Barton, and Banner (who still swears he’ll never change his name) are all in court. The hallway’s hushed and empty, Maria’s pace is comfortable, and Jasper feels right at home.

Except for the twisting sensation in the pit of his stomach, but he’s starting to accept that as a natural life process. Like breathing’s less-useful cousin, courtesy of one Maria Hill.

Maria’s office, like Fury’s, overlooks the park that stretches out behind the building, and Jasper admires the fall colors until Maria asks him to shut the door. His anxiety quadruples, climbing up his throat in an attempt to choke him and leave him dead on the threadbare carpet. 

He forces a smile as he complies. “Sorry.”

She frowns at him across her desk. “For?”

“For the whole ass-versation, mostly.” Her brow clenches, and he shoves his hands in his pockets. “Fury’ll beat down your door about it once he’s back from the conference, but the short version’s that some asshole decided the best way to deal with the investigator on his doorstep was to send his fucking dog out into the yard and—”

“You got bit?” she interrupts, and for a single, gorgeous second that Jasper swears he’ll treasure until the end of his day, she wears her worry like a ball gown. “Are you okay? Did you go to the emergency room? We have the additional insurance, you shouldn’t—”

He holds up his hands. “I’m fine,” he promises. Maria rolls her lips together, obviously unconvinced, her eyes still sliding up and down the length of his body. “Ripped my pants pretty bad, but the skin’s not broken. I’ll be bruised for a couple days, no long-term harm.” She nods a little, and his stomach clenches as he shifts his weight around. “Besides, I don’t own the complete _Buns of Steel_ DVD collection because they look good next to _Star Wars_.”

She snorts. “At least you’re not regaling me with your love of Jillian Michaels again.”

He shrugs. “The day’s still young.”

Maria chuckles—her big, room-filling laughs are rare, but she chuckles pretty easily—and gestures for him to sit down. Moving slower than usual’s an advantage for the first time in recorded history, though, because he’s able to study the way she smoothes her skirt over her thighs before she settles into her own chair. Full disclosure: he likes her thighs a lot.

Also, her calves. And her smile. And—

“What are you doing next weekend?”

The question jerks Jasper right out of his little reverie, and he blinks dumbly. When he opens his mouth, the only sound he’s able to find is the ever-eloquent, “Uh.”

Maria’s jaw tightens half a degree. “About a year ago, I won this weekend getaway _thing_ at a bar association luncheon raffle,” she explains with a tiny hand-wave. “Two days in a supposedly rustic cabin up in Carroll County. You know: claw-foot tub, ceiling beams everywhere, hiking trails where one misplaced step sends you plummeting to certain death.”

He grins. “Sounds like your kind of place.”

“Ass-bruises or not, I will stab you with my letter opener,” she threatens, but there’s no heat in her voice. Actually, there’s something thready and unfamiliar there, and Jasper swallows as she leans her arms on her desk. “I planned on foisting the whole thing off on Phil as a wedding present,” she confesses, “but the ‘experience’ expires at the end of the month. Either I use it, pass it off to somebody else, or forever lose my chance to sleep under moth-eaten quilts in a room heated by a wood-burning stove. Which is maybe the better of the three options, but— I thought maybe you might want to come.” She pauses just long enough to wet her lips. “With me.”

Deep down in his heart of hearts, Jasper knows that his stomach can’t splash down into his shoes and slosh around there, but damned if his eyes don’t drop down to his feet to check for the puddle. He knows he’s still alive because his heart’s hammering and his breath’s pulling at his chest, but he’s also not sure he’s _awake_. Maybe the dog bite sent him to the emergency room, and he’s bleeding out while also imagining that Maria Hill’s inviting him for a romantic weekend away in the wilder part of the state.

A weekend in an old spring bed, drinking coffee in front of a fire, laughing in their casual clothes like two people who _liked_ one another instead of—

He clears his throat a little before he glances up at her. “I thought we drew the line at sleep-overs,” he says. She huffs out a breath, and he raises his hands defensively when she rolls her eyes. “I’m not objecting, or even saying no, but we set out ground rules and those rules clearly stated—”

“You didn’t complain when we lifted those rules because your fumigator forced you into the Holiday Inn,” she reminds him. He snaps his mouth shut, and she shakes her head. “I still don’t think we should be sharing toothbrushes and planning brunch with Phil and Clint,” she continues after a few seconds, “but we haven’t really seen much of each other over the last few weeks. And since I like spending time with you, and you like spending time with me . . . ” She shrugs. “We could do that without, I don’t know, sneaking around.”

Jasper nods. For a few seconds, he considers pouring out his whole heart and soul like he’s Stark declaring his undying love for Banner. Truth is, he’s written eight hundred drafts of the whole, ridiculous speech, the one that starts with _I know we agreed to just be friends who have sex_ and ends with _given enough time and motivation, I could be in love with somebody like you._ He’d cribbed the last half of that sentence from a musical his friends’d dragged him to, but even now, it feels like the right answer: he’s not in love with Maria Hill, but he could make it to the end of that particular line. Especially since, right now, she’s inviting him to spend a weekend with her.

A whole weekend, for the first time since their first accidental entanglement on the Fourth of July (when, after Stark’s party, they’d fumbled their way from her foyer to her couch and started this complicated dance).

She glances down at her fingernails, and he draws in a breath. “I’d love to,” he says honestly, and he pretends that his stomach stays all steady and calm when her eyes immediately snap back up. “And I’m not trying to be a dick about the whole ‘ground rules’ thing, either. I just know that you like your neat and orderly lines, and if I smear them all over the place—”

“Is ‘smear’ really the verb you want to use right now?” she breaks in, and dammit, Jasper laughs like an asshole at that one. She grins. “I’ll call the cabin people and make sure they’re available the weekend after this one. And you—”

“Come prepared, I know,” he finishes for her, and her grin brightens. He always texts her with that, a warning and a promise presented about an hour before they tumble onto the nearest flat surface together. But thinking about tumbling sends his blood flowing further south than is maybe work appropriate, so he pushes out of his chair. “Keep me posted, yeah?”

“As long as you avoid other hungry dogs, sure,” she replies, and she winks as he ducks into the hall.

Rhodes is long gone by the time Jasper returns to the reception desk, and he physically shoos the too-dry male intern out of his seat before the guy’s resting bitch face starts melting a hole in the window. The receptionist’ll be back from her vacation tomorrow, just like Fury and Rogers will be back from their conference and Odinson’ll be back from playing nursemaid to baby with a cold, and Jasper knows he’ll miss the silence. Worse, he’ll miss the anonymity, the ability to slip into Maria’s office unnoticed and to talk to her like a human.

They’re polite at work, but it’s not the same as when they’re elsewhere. When they’re grabbing a late dinner after they’ve ruined a set of Maria’s sheets, or chatting at one of Stark’s parties, or stretched out on a (hopefully fake) bear-skin rug in front of a roaring fire this coming—

Jasper grits his teeth.

He can’t invest in this stupid weekend away. Not yet.

He spends a good ten minutes sorting through subpoenas, service returns, and all his other paperwork before he finally abandons the pile all together and reaches for his cell phone. As usual, there’s a group text at the top of all the other text streams, because his friends are assholes with cushy jobs and all the spare time in the world to text. The most recent four or five messages are all part a protracted rant from Victoria about the Halloween season’s _deleterious and fucking annoying effect_ on her students.

If anybody ever picked the wrong career path, that person is Victoria Hand.

Jasper rolls his eyes at her last message— _What do they expect me to say? “Sure, come to school as the slutty pumpkin?”_ —before he thumbs open the keyboard and starts typing.

 **Me:** _level seven 911 meeting at TH tonight. 8 pm. bring your a-game._

He’s barely opened his e-mail on the slow-as-shit reception computer when his phone buzzes with a response.

 **V. Hand:** _Exactly how fucked are you?_

He chews on the inside of his cheek before he opens the text stream back up. _just bring your a-game_ , he repeats, and shuts off his phone.

 

==

 

“Sitwell, you are officially fucked seven ways from Sunday,” Isabelle Hartley declares, her voice so full of laughter that Jasper feels himself scowl. “I don’t even know if I can rescue you from yourself anymore, you’re _that_ fucked.”

Jasper glares at her for good measure. “Glad to know my friends support me in everything I do,” he mutters.

“Oh, we support you,” Victoria promises, her elbow—as always—resting on the back of Hartley’s chair. Hartley nods along like she maybe agrees, but she’s grinning, too. “But we also recognize a hopeless case when we see it.”

“Exactly what I told him,” Rhodes chimes in, and he and Victoria air-toast one another from across the table.

Jasper groans at both of them—at all of them, actually, because Hartley’s _still_ cracking herself up as she helps herself to the last of their fried pickles. The rest of the Hub’s quiet, which for a Tuesday night is pretty standard. There’re a couple stubble-faced guys in their twenties at the bar itself, and there’s college kids clustered around a couple of the pool tables, but otherwise, it’s the same smoke-scented dive bar as every other night of the week.

It also offers some of the best bar food this side of the continental divide, but Jasper’s mostly just thirsty. For liquid courage, specifically, because god knows he needs _something_ to power him through this conversation.

Luckily, the waitress brings over another beer before he’s done with his first.

Over at the dart boards, a couple of Hartley’s little clingers-on—her employees, technically, but also some of her best friends—start bickering loudly, and Hartley smirks as she swigs her beer. “See? They agree with me.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “Or they’re fighting over Idaho’s questionable math.”

She shrugs. “Doesn’t mean they don’t agree with me.” When he clenches his jaw a little, she snorts and sets down her beer bottle. “You want to do this democratically, instead?” she asks. “If anyone at this table thinks Jasper should go on this weekend away with his lady-friend, raise your hand now.” 

Rhodes sips his beer like his damned life depends on it. Victoria scrapes breading off a pickle with her thumbnail. Hartley smiles with teeth. “See? Even you’re not defending this horrible decision.”

“I abstained as a conscientious objector.”

“Or because you know in your heart it’s a bad idea,” Hartley needles. He reaches for his beer bottle, but she leans forward to slide it out his reach. “You called a level seven emergency,” she reminds him. “You need this.”

“I need advice, not your shitty harassment,” he retorts sharply. There’s something nasty in the back of his voice, and Hartley’s eyebrows jump up into her hairline as she relinquishes his beer. He sighs. “Look,” he says after a beat, “a big part of me know that this is a bad idea. Maybe even the _worst_ idea, given that she actually wrote down our ground rules and texted them to me.” Rhodes snorts a laugh that Jasper promptly ignores. “But the rest of me’s wondering if maybe this is how it starts, you know? We drop one rule, then a couple others, and suddenly—”

“You’re buying a house with a white picket fence?” Victoria finishes for him. “Adopting a fluffy dog named Fido and buying a jogging stroller for your two-point-five kids?” He glances down at his beer bottle, and she sighs. “You’ve been sleeping with her for, what, a month now? Six weeks?”

He wets his lips. “Since the Fourth of July.”

Something unreadable flashes across her face, and her mouth tightens into a thin line. “For a couple months, then,” she corrects. “And aside from the hotel thing—”

Rhodes points his beer bottle at her. “Which you’ve got to admit is outside the rules.”

She nods. “—she’s given you exactly _zero_ indication that she wants more than just a friendship with sex on the side.” She leans back in her seat. “Sounds like your only choices are to either figure out an exit strategy now or to swallow your feelings until you explode.”

“And engulf at least half the office with you,” Rhodes tacks on. Jasper huffs out a little breath, and his friend shrugs. “People already suspect you’ve got _somebody_ in your bed at night. You show up with a raincloud over your head, it’s gonna to spread around that place like wildfire. I’ve visited high schools with a less-active gossip mill.”

“Are any of those schools looking for a principal?” Victoria asks, and Jasper almost smiles when Hartley elbows her—and again when she slides her fingers through Victoria’s long hair. “I know you like her a lot,” Victoria adds after a couple seconds. “It’s actually nice to see you into something that’s not food, craft beer, or bad martial arts movies. But I think you need to accept the fact that she might just be into your friendship and, disturbingly, your body.”

Next to her, Hartley shudders. “Keep that up, and we’re not having sex for a week.”

Victoria shrugs and reaches for her beer. “You’ll get over it.”

Hartley screws up her nose at that, but Jasper ignores it to flop back in his chair. “Not to be the one to out-logic the high school principal and the security consultant whatever-the-hell-you-are,” he says, and Hartley shrugs at her new job title, “but there’s nothing wrong with me being more into this relationship than she is as long as we end up in the same place. Which is not necessarily somewhere with a white picket fence and a fluffy dog.”

“Could be a sleek dog,” Rhodes suggests, and smirks around the mouth of his bottle.

Hartley rolls her eyes. “Stop intentionally missing the point, dog-boy,” she snaps. When Jasper blinks at her, looking very picture of befuddled innocence (at least, he _hopes_ ), she heaves a sigh. “I can’t believe you’re driving me to this extreme,” she mutters, and twists around in her chair. “Hunter!”

Because he’s smart enough to know when a plan’s backfired, Jasper groans and covers his face with his hands. “You don’t need to bring him in on this.”

Hartley jabs a finger in his direction. “You’ve done this to yourself.”

“Maybe, but if you think this’ll fucking solve _anything_ —”

“Hunter!” she bellows again, even louder than before.

The foursome at the dart boards finally swivel around in their direction, and within a couple seconds, Hartley’s second-in-command and go-to smartass trots over with his bottle of Australian piss-water. “You need me, boss?”

Jasper seriously considers thumping his head against the tabletop, but Hartley ignores his sounds of distress. “Hunter, what is the danger of being completely head-over-heels for a woman who is not really that interested in you?”

Hunter snorts into his beer like he’s _this close_ to laughing aloud. “Liking a woman more than she likes you is just another way of letting the she-devil _just_ close enough for her to sink her venomous claws into your soft bits. Because one minute, you’re happily flashing her heart-eyes and offering to buy her jewelry, and the next minute, you’re alone at a bed-and-breakfast in Tennessee because _someone_ decided your comment about the amount she texts other people is tantamount to— Hey!”

The beer mat that pings off the back of Hunter’s head lands in Rhodes’s lap, and all of them (Hunter included) twist around to watch the guy behind Hunter line up another shot. Jasper always forgets his name, but it’s hard to miss the breadth of his enormous shoulders or the way his jaw clenches when Hunter tries to hide behind his beer bottle. “I didn’t mention Bobbi once in all of that!” he defends.

The other man crosses his arms. “You implied it.”

“Mate, implying my ex-wife is Satan herself is in _no_ way against the rules that you, Trip, and Idaho drummed up that week I was—” Hunter’s friend flings another beer mat, presumably harder than the first, and it whizzes past Hunter’s left ear. “Okay, Jesus, sorry!”

Victoria sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. “I hate your team,” she grumbles.

Hartley shrugs. “They’re cheap and good at their jobs,” she reminds her wife, “and more than that, Hunter makes a good point.”

Hunter grins over his shoulder. “Hear that, Mack? I make a good point.”

Hartley rolls her eyes and shoves at Hunter’s side. “Go make it somewhere else, now.”

“And miss out on this golden opportunity to give your old police academy buddy relationship advice?” Hunter retorts. He drags over an empty chair and straddles it, beer bottle still dangling from his fingers. Victoria glares at him like she hopes to bore a hole in his head, and he ignores it to lean closer to Jasper. “Mate,” he says conspiratorially, “let me tell you a little secret about how to avoid heartbreak at the hands of a woman.”

Rhodes snorts a laugh. “This’ll be good.”

Hunter waves him off. “The trick,” he continues, “is to never let them win. You have to keep the upper hand at all times, because the second you show them soft belly? _Bam_!” He smacks the tabletop with an open palm, and all the bottles rattle. “You’re done for.”

Still standing over by the dart boards, the man with the shoulders—Mack, Hunter called him—rolls his eyes. “You can’t be serious,” he complains, and Hunter blinks at him over his shoulder. “Your best relationship advice starts and ends with ‘don’t let women know you’re a person?’ That’s your answer?”

Hunter scowls. “Well, you wouldn’t know if I’m right or not, now would you?”

Mack hesitates for a half-second before he shrugs. “Fair enough,” he replies, and returns to his dart game. 

“I’m pretty sure most of humanity disagrees with you, though,” another voice chimes in, and Jasper glances up from his beer bottle just as Bobbi Morse walks up behind Hunter. She claps him on the shoulder, her fingernails curling against his t-shirt, and Hunter cringes like she’s ten seconds from drawing blood. Jasper smirks when he thinks about it. “Do I need to apologize for him again?”

Hunter scoffs and shoots her a wounded expression. “I’m helping Izzy, Vicky, and Rhodes solve all of Sitwell’s worldly woes.”

Victoria’s hand clenches hard around her pint glass. “ _Vicky_ ,” she mutters.

Hartley pats her on the thigh before glancing over at Bobbi. “Sitwell’s friend-with-benefits invited him for a romantic weekend away in a secluded cabin, and he’s having feelings about it.”

Bobbi cringes sympathetically. “Ouch.”

“And,” Hunter chimes in, “he doesn’t realize that it’s clearly a trap.”

Bobbi rolls her eyes. “Hunter, you wouldn’t know a woman’s trap if it bit you in the ass,” she informs him, stopping to stare when Rhodes, Hartley, and Victoria all burst out laughing. Jasper’s whole face warms, and this time, he actually leans to thump his head against the table. It smells like stale beer and desperation, but it’s still an improvement to having his personal life aired all over the Hub. 

Rhodes, because he’s human, claps Jasper on the shoulder. He appreciates that small sign of kindness.

“You know, for what it’s worth, it might not be a trap,” Bobbi says after a few seconds. When Jasper glances up at her, she shrugs. “When you start out as friends—with or without the benefits attached—it’s hard to transition into something more. For all you know, she might be trying to tell you something.”

“Yeah, like how she wants to trap you,” Hunter offers.

Bobbi smacks him in the back of his head only to ignore his whiny and generally offended sputtering. “Or that she wants to take your relationship past the point of a no-strings-attached fling,” she corrects as she lifts her beer to her lips. “Just food for thought.”

“Yeah,” Jasper echoes, and he’s not sure what’s worse: the way his three friends roll their eyes at Bobbi’s advice, or the little spark of hope that starts to come alive in his gut. 

 

==

 

“Stop,” Maria says, but she laughs as she drags the sheet up to her shoulders.

“What, I’m not allowed to enjoy this rare moment of the _Mariacus Hillious_ without her navy-blue suit and matching pumps?” Jasper returns. She flings one of the bed’s half-dozen throw pillows at him, but he jumps out of the way. The shutter on his cell phone camera provides a nice backing beat as he circles the bed. “Notice that her hair is messy and definitely not in a librarian’s bun,” he says in his best _Planet Earth_ voice, and she rolls her eyes at him. “Proof positive that she has indeed shed her damn ‘serious attorney’ skin for something more comfortable.”

“You’ll never be comfortable again if you don’t knock it off,” she threatens, lobbing another pillow at him. He just grins and zooms in. “You know, there are serious concerns about the security of cloud-based storage,” she presses, “and if these photographs end up all over the office, I won’t be held responsible for how many tiny pieces of Jasper Sitwell they fish out of Colier Lake.”

Jasper lowers his phone. “You weren’t so concerned about the cloud last month when you asked me for those pictures of my—”

“In my defense,” Maria cuts him off, “it was a _very_ boring conference, and I had an itch that needed scratching.”

There’s something about the way the last couple words twist—they’re softer and darker all at once—and the way she purses her lips that lights a fire in the pit of Jasper’s stomach. When he shoves his phone back onto the bedside table, it’s because he’s climbing onto the bed like a lion stalking his prey. Appropriate, maybe, given her tiny, animal-print underwear. She grins and falls back among all the colorful throw pillows, her skin almost as pale as the bedspread itself. 

Trust Jasper on this, okay? Because when the sheet falls away, he’s treated to a lot of her skin.

“You still itchy?” he asks, his voice _this close_ to cracking like he’s thirteen again.

Her mouth curves into the world’s most dangerous smile. “Almost always,” she promises, and fists her hands into his t-shirt to drag him down for a kiss.

They spend a long time in bed together, longer than usual, and Jasper feels his heart swell every time Maria laughs breathlessly or scrapes her fingernails along the plane of his back. It’s just warm enough this October to crack the windows, and every once in a while a breeze slides across their skin. Except Maria shivers more when he drags his stubble over her smooth, naked stomach than when the cold air hits her, and the goose flesh on her arms only rises when he rakes teeth against her hip bone.

“Either get on with the program or hand me a back scratcher,” she complains at one point, her palm pressing lightly on the back of Jasper’s head.

He grins as he glances up at her. “You bring one of those along just in case I ran out of juice?”

“Keep teasing,” she threatens, “and you might just find out.” 

“Like anything battery-operated holds a candle to me,” he retorts, and she actually rolls her eyes at him—at least, until she rolls her hips up to _meet_ him.

Afterward, when they’re stretched bonelessly across the bed, he brushes a stray hair out of her eyes. “I like this,” he says. It’s softer and sweeter aloud than in his head, and Maria’s brow crinkles. “Not having to rush, I mean. Taking our time.”

She snorts, but until after the corner of her mouth kicks up into a tiny smile. “There’s a fine line between taking your time and me dying of old age, Jasper.”

He grins. “The fingernail marks on my shoulders suggest you _like_ me on that line,” he reminds her, and he laughs when she smacks him in the stomach.

All things considered, the cabin’s not too bad as accommodations go—it’s just one big room with a bathroom off to one side and a slightly dilapidated porch out front—and he stands out in the cool October morning while Maria showers. There’s still debris from the night before (plastic wine glasses, empty wine bottle, foil wrappers from the complimentary chocolates the rental place set out for them), but after considering it for a couple minutes, he leaves it there. The mess reminds him that this weekend’s real, that Maria’s laughter and casual touches aren’t some bubble that’ll pop when he wakes up from his fever dream, and he needs that.

He’s not sure when he transformed into a sentimental asshole, but he blames the last couple months—and the light of Maria’s smile.

Maria’s humming as she wanders out onto the porch in her towel and, with absolutely no hesitation, steals his coffee mug. “It’s the only one in the cabin,” she informs him when he frowns at her.

“God forbid you drink your Sanka out of a glass like all the other uncultured idiots out there.”

“Like your fancy Starbucks Via is so much better,” she returns, and carries his mug back inside. 

He wastes a couple seconds studying the line of her back through the window (first in her towel, then in significantly _less_ than her towel) before he fishes his cell phone out of his pocket. He considers the usual group text for a few seconds before scrolling down a few names. 

He starts, deletes, and restarts the text a half-dozen times before he finally writes, _tell me I’m a fucking dumbass so I don’t do something stupid_

By the time the reply finally chimes through, Maria’s mostly dressed and quietly singing what sounds suspiciously like One Direction’s “One Thing.”

 **I. Hartley:** _You’re a fucking dumbass. You’re the king of the dumbasses. Please don’t propose to her._

Jasper rolls his eyes. _because that’s my plan._

This time, the reply’s almost instantaneous. _Given how much you seem to like this girl, I wouldn’t be all that surprised._

“Hey,” Maria suddenly says from behind him, and Jasper whips around so fast he almost drops his damn phone on the ground. She frowns for a second, her eyes narrowing, but her expression softens when he forces a smile. “I did some googling, and there’s a not-horrible hiking trail through the woods that is almost guaranteed not to kill us. You in?”

He shoves his phone back into his pocket. “Thought you were concerned about falling into ravines.”

She shrugs. “If it’ll get me out of the preliminary hearing I have on Monday, I’ll throw myself down _three_ ravines,” she replies, and tosses him his balled-up socks when he grins at her.

The hiking trail’s not really _fun_ , but aside from Jasper tripping on a couple exposed tree roots and Maria almost falling on her ass thanks to an inconvenient muddy patch, they survive the experience. The sun filters through the trees (most of which are still clinging onto their last brown leaves), warm enough that they both end up unzipping their hoodies, and the damp on the breeze leaves the whole forest smelling earthy and refreshing. They swap stories as they walk, Maria gesturing as she recounts years of disastrous camping-and-fishing trips with her dad and brothers, and Jasper laughs hard enough at one point that he almost fucking face-plants into a bank of leaves. He catches himself, stumbles, and lands hard on a tipped-over tree trunk.

When she’s done cackling at his expense, she offers him a hand up. “What about you?” she asks. 

“You mean besides your attempt to murder me right now?” he returns. She rolls her eyes, still smiling, and he ignores her to wipe moss off his ass. “Don’t pretend I didn’t notice that. Prelude to you cutting me up and dumping me in the lake.”

“Like I’d actually use that lake,” she replies. He glares at her, and she shrugs. “What? The cops patrol around that lake pretty often thanks to all the pot-smoking, heavy-drinking college kids and their polluted beach parties. I’d pick somewhere else.”

He must spend a couple seconds too many staring at her, his lips pursed and brow furrowed, because she plants her hands on her hips. “What?”

“I just can’t decide if I’m scared or turned on,” he replies, and she smacks him in the arm before they start back down the trail.

He spends the rest of their walk back to the cabin explaining his weird, spiraling weeping willow of a family tree. “My mom’s Honduran, but Dad’s Irish,” he explains at one point as he helps her climb over a big log in the path. “Means I spend one family reunion speaking broken Spanish while trying to memorize the names of my eight thousand cousins, and I spend the other one drinking Guinness and memorizing the _other_ eight thousand names.”

She grins. “How many Marias?”

“You don’t even want to know,” he promises, and she laughs as she hops back down into the dirt.

He’s still rambling about his family reunions when they shuck their muddy shoes on the porch and walk back into the cabin, and once Maria switches on the radio and finds something other than Christian pop, they fall into the steady rhythm of trading stories. It’s the first time in a long time—probably in years—that Jasper’s felt this fucking _comfortable_ around a woman he’s also sleeping with, and every time they bump hips or elbows in the tiny kitchen area, his heart flutters like he’s some high school idiot. He ignores it the same as he’s ignored every little gift from Maria Hill—their dinners, their afternoons at the shooting range, their weekend in that hotel, their witty text message exchanges—and somehow, it works.

At least, until after lunch, when flopping onto the couch together morphs into something _very_ different, and Jasper’s heart betrays him all over again.

Maria’s dozing on the couch an hour later when Jasper, elbow-deep in cleaning up their lunch mess, remembers his cell phone. He digs it out of his pocket and promptly rolls his eyes at the two waiting messages.

 **I. Hartley:** _Your silence means I’m calling in the big guns._

 **V. Hand:** _Isabelle says I should call you a dumbass. I just hope you get this before you drag that poor woman off to the 24-hour wedding chapel._

 _I hate you both_ , he replies, and shuts his cell phone off.

 

==

 

“You know,” Jasper remarks the next morning, “we could do more of this.”

They’re finally showered and dressed, and those two simple tasks feel like a monumental victory thanks mostly to the dreary gray skies outside and also to Maria. Maria, who’d woken him up in the middle of the night with a kiss and very clever hands. Maria, who’d glowed like a marble statue in the moonlight. Maria, who’d _felt_ like marble, smooth and cool under his hands as he’d drawn shapes on her ribcage and hips and memorized her face in the almost-dark.

And then, Maria who’d followed him into the shower and helped him discover at least five new uses for a bathroom counter, because dear _god_.

His knees still feel like jelly thanks to the way they’d stumbled from the shower to the nearest flat surface without even pausing for breath, but the jelly feeling triples when Maria freezes in the middle of her packing. Her back’s to him, but he watches her shoulders tighten under her camisole. He wastes ten seconds thinking about the text messages from the day before and then ten _more_ thinking about last night: another bottle of wine, ringing laughter, lazy kisses that lingered for what felt like hours. He’s recounting their poker game (Maria’s a rotten cheat) when she asks, “Do what?”

Her tone’s aggressively causal.

Jasper aggressively tries to keep his fucking wits together. 

“This kind of thing,” he says with a shrug. He rounds the bed slowly, like approaching a wounded animal that somebody else’d backed into a corner. Maria’s fingers clench around the sides of her overnight bag, her eyes focused on her underwear. “I know that we’ve got the ground rules,” he continues carefully, “and I like the rules a lot. I like how they work for us, how we’ve kind of become friends thanks to, you know, really fucking good sex.” She huffs a tiny laugh, and he grins. “I just think that if two people like each other, they should spend more time together. More weekends away, or dinners, or—” 

“You know I can’t do that, right?” she cuts in, and he presses his lips together. Her whole face is careful, gentle as her words, but he still feels like his heart’s been replaced with the drum half of a drum and bugle corps. She shakes her head. “Jasper, we talked about this. We talked about it a _lot_ after Stark’s party. And you _know_ —”

“Yeah, but Stark’s party was, what? Three months ago?” She glances away, and he rubs a hand over his head. “Remember back when Barnes started? You told him that you should never let an agreement with defense counsel sit for more than a couple weeks without re-confirming it.”

Maria rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. “You’re comparing our reasonable ground rules to a tentative plea agreement, now?” she asks sharply.

“No, I— Okay, shitty example, let me try again.” She draws in a breath like she wants to argue, but after a couple seconds, she’s still just staring at the ceiling. He wets his lips. “We’ve been doing this for three months,” he repeats, “and I just want to make sure that the rules are still good. Because I figure if there was ever a time to reevaluate, it’s now. After all this.”

He gestures around to the cabin—around to the messy sheets and the throw pillows that are still on the floor from yesterday, around to the coffee mug they’d shared that morning and the last of the complimentary chocolates. Maria nods a little, her jaw working, but she never budges from her spot. Jasper wonders whether she’s working out a speech or whether she’s planning to storm away without another word. Could honestly go either way.

Finally, though, she sighs and glances over at him. “You know I like you, right?” she asks, and her voice is so unexpectedly gentle that Jasper blinks accidentally. She shakes her head. “Maybe I’m not good at telling you that, I don’t know. But I do. I like you, and I like spending time with you. It’s just—” She pauses to run fingers through her still-damp hair. “I can’t promise anybody my time, Jasper. Not with my work schedule, not with all the baggage that’s still stacked in my closet from my marriage. It’s hard enough for me to find the ten minutes a week to call my dad—and to ignore the fact that he _always_ asks about Mark.”

She pauses again, her one hand clutching her own shoulder in a weird kind of half-hug, and for a long moment, they just watch one another. Study each other’s faces the same way as in bed, but without the benefit of the afterglow. For the first time all weekend, Maria looks exhausted, like she wants to crawl back into bed and fortify herself against the next week at work. And worse, for the first time all weekend, _Jasper_ feels the same.

They’re stupidly busy people, he realizes. He’s out every day running from dogs and arguing with unwilling witnesses, and Maria’s a soldier trapped in weird prosecutorial trench warfare. There’s no room casual dinners and dating in that world.

He’s about to explain that when Maria swallows. “But,” she says haltingly, “if you feel differently, or you can’t do this without—”

“No,” Jasper breaks in, raising a hand. “That’s not what I want. I don’t need dinners and movies and awkward family holidays to like being around you. I just thought I’d offer.”

She nods, still a little unevenly, and when he walks over to touch her back, she offers him a tiny, half-uncomfortable smile. They linger there for a moment, eyes still locked, before her shoulders finally relax. “I think I should be offended,” she says after a long breath.

He blinks. “At?”

“At the fact you don’t want to wear an ugly Christmas sweater with me.”

Her smirk feels like a dam breaking, and when Jasper laughs, it uncoils the last spring of tension from the bottom of his stomach. “You know I’ve seen most of your sweaters, right?” he asks. “Because unless you meant some of those to be ironic, they are _all_ fucking ugly, and—”

“Shut the hell up,” Maria interrupts, and he’s still grinning when she drags him down for a kiss.

 

==

 

“I’m not saying any of us told you so,” Rhodes says on Monday morning, his ass resting on the edge of Jasper’s desk as he works his way through his second mug of District Attorney coffee, “but we _all_ told you so.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “I think I hear a bomb threat on the third floor you should go investigate.”

Rhodes laughs at that, asshole friend that he is, and Jasper considers up-ending his own coffee in the guy’s lap when an e-mail pops up on his computer. He promptly abandons his latest game of witness search-and-find to switch windows. The fact he can ignore Rhodes in the interim’s just a nice little bonus.

His mouth dries out a little when he discovers it’s a subjectless message from Maria, but he forces himself to open it anyway.

_I know we had that one kind of weird moment, but otherwise, it was a good weekend. Maybe we can reminisce Friday night?_

He wets his lips before he clicks the reply button.

 _Unless you’re in the same kind of hurry as in the bathroom Sunday, I’ll come prepared_ , he writes back, and sends it off without a second thought.


	3. November

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In November, Maria sends Jasper off on a work-related wild goose chase thanks to Heimdall’s new creep of a client. She also deals with suspicious friends, a Stark family Thanksgiving, a hearing with Laufeyson, and a calendar. One of these things is actually a lot worse than the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for oblique references to violence against the elderly, racism, and sexism. There’s no slurs or anything explicit, but just so you’re aware of what’s lurking under the surface here.
> 
> Also, there are references into this chapter to both Duty of Candor (which occurred prior to this chapter) and the Stark-Banner Thanksgiving from Chain of Custody. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta readers, Jen and saranoh, who sniff out errors like nobody else I know. Seriously, these ladies are tops.

Maria laughs.

The sound fills her tiny office, punctuated only by her tossing her case file and pen onto her desk, and across from her, Ezra Heimdall shifts his weight around in his chair. Nine-tenths of the time, she loves him almost as much as she loves Phil—Heimdall’s tall, dark, and handsome, ruthlessly reasonable, and always willing to find some time in his schedule to talk plea deals and discovery exchanges. The other one-tenth of the time, though, she wants to smack him upside his handsome freaking head.

He purses his lips like he’s just sucked all the juice out of a lemon. “Maria—”

“No, please, listen to yourself,” she says, and his jaw tightens as he clamps down on the end of his sentence. “Your client, with his three-foot long rap sheet—all thefts, might I add—is accused of burglarizing and beating up three different little old ladies. And you, his usually helpful attorney, want me to amend the charges down to attempted burglary?” She shakes her head as she leans against the window ledge. “No prosecutor in their right mind would _ever_ —”

“Even with our alibi witness?” Heimdall interrupts, raising one eyebrow. “Because from where I’m sitting, your case falls apart the second I put his neighbor on the stand.”

She rolls her eyes. “And when, three questions into cross-examination, he folds like a bad poker hand—”

“Except he won’t.” Maria crosses her arms, but only to hide her momentary frustration. Holding a neutral face and a blithe smile feels a little like smiling through a root canal. Heimdall must notice it, too, because he leans forward. “As you and Jasper Sitwell will find out as soon as you subpoena him, my client’s neighbor is rock-solid. Ex-marine, mid-forties, well respected in the community. Teaches Sunday school and coaches high school track for pennies.” She glances out the window at the thick November clouds, but not before he shrugs. “You, on the other hand,” he continues, “have a high-school aged drug dealer who told the police he saw my client at the retirement community but now can’t be found.”

She grits her teeth for a half-second. “He’s not a figment of the police’s collective imagination. He’s just missing.”

“I’m sure.” She whips her head around to glare at him, and he raises his hands. “Smugness retracted, but not my point.”

“Which is?”

“That Kevin Broderick isn’t the one who hurt those women.” She sucks in a sharp breath, ready to argue, but he just spreads his fingers in the air. “Look at the facts, Maria. He’s a twenty-five-year-old kid with a rough past and a history of petty crimes. Not this.” She digs her fingers further into her arms. “He’s never met the victims and can’t even tell the buildings at the retirement community apart. Your case was weak before, but with this alibi witness? It’s in shambles.” He shrugs as he settles back into his chair. “A plea agreement—with amended charges—is a reasonable solution.”

“I’m pretty sure a couple world leaders felt that way about genocide,” she snaps back sharply, “and they were wrong in the long run, too.” He blinks at her exactly once before his jaw tightens. “In retrospect, I probably went from ‘zero’ to ‘Nazis’ a little fast.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “A little?”

“Okay, a lot. But you still know where I’m coming from.”

“From community panic and a boss who’s still reeling from certain news stories, yes.” Maria’s whole body tenses without her permission, but Heimdall just shrugs. “I know you want to find who hurt these women, who scared their friends, families, and neighbors. My client is generously offering to accept some small amount of culpability for being in the vicinity later that night—”

She snorts. “Because he did it.”

“—because he recognizes that proving a negative is nearly impossible.” She clenches her jaw and forces herself to bite back the anger that threatens to bubble right to the surface. “Three charges of attempted burglary will still put him in prison for at least two years. Time for him to reconsider his life path, let’s say.” When she uncrosses her arms, he shakes his head. “Maria, this is the best I can do.”

“I have three seventy-plus women in the hospital right now,” she reminds him tightly. He rolls his lips together, his gaze dropping to her desk. She feels like a robot as she steps away from the window, too tense and unyielding. “I have an entire retirement community _terrified_ that they’re about to become victims four through three hundred. So when you tell me that a plea to severely reduced charges is the best you can do?” She plants her hands on her desktop and leans all the way forward. “I call bullshit.”

He snaps his eyes back up. There’s something about them—their color, maybe, or the fact that they’re both soft and piercing at once—that leaves Maria feeling very small. She curls her fingernails against her desktop and tries to ignore the spike of nerves in her gut.

“You’re gambling,” Heimdall finally says. “You’re gambling away a sure thing because of pressure.”

“And the second I find our witness,” she returns, “you’ll learn the _real_ definition of ‘sure thing.’”

Heimdall’s out the door less than a minute after that, his briefcase swinging as he strides down the hallway and disappears around a corner. Maria knows she’s supposed to walk him all the way to the front desk—a cover-your-ass security measure that Rhodey implemented a hundred years ago—but instead of turning left as she walks out of her office, she swings right. The district attorney’s office as a whole is thrumming this morning, pulsing with this strange kind of energy, like it’s a giant, organic creature built of a thousand smaller, equally organic parts. File clerks rush by, the interns trail after Phil like adorable little ducklings, Jane and Pepper bend over Jane’s computer monitors as they fight with the new electronic filing system. Maria loves the office in these moments, loves the noise and warmth and _power_ of it all, but right now, her heart’s lodged in her throat.

Her heart, plus a bolus of frustration the size of a softball and the urge to punch someone who deserves it right in the face.

And none of those feelings really evaporate as she approaches Jasper Sitwell’s office, either.

Really, the “office” is just a cubicle with a sliding privacy door, but someone’d once printed out a sign reading _SITWELL’S OFFICE_ in enormous, bold font, and somehow, the label’d stuck around. He sits with his back to the hallway, and, as usual, jumps a mile in the air when she raps on the edge of the cubicle frame to catch his attention. “Jesus,” he swears under his breath, but of course, his whole expression softens the second their eyes meet. “Oh, hey.”

Maria’s heart—still stuck in the back of her throat, remember—twists in a way she’s really _not_ comfortable with. 

She swallows before asking, “Do you still have the police reports for the Broderick case?”

“Nice to see you, too,” he jokes, and she narrows her eyes. He bristles at that, the grin dropping right off his lips, and she ignores the half-second pang of guilt that crawls into her belly. “They’re in my to-do pile, hang on,” he says quickly, and pulls open a file drawer. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a witness listed in the report. Jason something-or-other, I think.” He glances up at her, frowning, and she waves a hand toward the file drawer. He rolls his eyes before he starts flicking through dozens of folders. “He disappeared about ten seconds after making his initial statements to the police on scene, and we need him.”

“Because he knows all Broderick’s secrets?”

“Because he’s the only person who can disprove Broderick’s new alibi witness.” He pauses for a moment at that, and she sighs. “I don’t really want to use him,” she admits after a half-second. “He’s a walking credibility problem and will probably be uncooperative. Hell, he’s why I put all the Broderick stuff on the back-burner to begin with. But now, I need you to find him.”

Jasper nods a little as he pulls a thick folder out of the drawer. “That’s the retirement community case, right? The three old ladies who got burglarized?” She nods back, and he frowns. “Don’t you have three living witnesses who can prove it’s your guy better than some missing jackass?”

“No, what I have is three terrified old ladies who’d probably pick you and Rhodey out of a line-up before they picked a strung-out white kid in a hoodie.” His frown transforms immediately into a scowl, and she holds up her hands. “I’m sorry, Jasper, but it’s true.”

“My _abuela_ would disagree with you on that one,” he says.

She snorts. “So would mine, but that’s not the point,” she retorts, and some small part of her stomach unclenches when he flashes her a tiny smile.

He unearths the report a few seconds later, and she crosses to sit on the edge of his desk as they review what they know about Jason Davidson: age, address, phone number, possible aliases. They run his name through their case database and then through police records, ferreting out as much information as possible. Twice, Maria shifts until her leg presses against Jasper’s thigh, a familiar warmth that crawls up into her chest and coaxes her heart back down where it belongs; more than twice, Jasper’s hand brushes hers as he reaches for a pen, a highlighter, or his mouse.

“I’m out this afternoon and possibly most of tomorrow with a stack of subpoenas a mile high,” he says once they’ve printed out a dozen different police reports involving the mysterious Jason Davidson, “but I can jump on this as soon as that’s done. Start talking to some of the people he’s run with, see if I can’t hunt him down.” He pauses briefly, his eyes searching her face, and she tries very hard to force a smile. “If that’s fast enough for you, I mean.”

“That’s as fast as I can possibly ask,” she replies. When she reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, he touches her wrist, his thumb brushing her pulse point. “Thanks, Jasper.”

He shrugs. “That’s the job.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Finding witnesses, yes. Diving in feet first because Ezra Heimdall’s unearthed an alibi witness, on the other hand . . . ”

She trails off, her fingers sliding along the curve of Jasper’s shoulder as she slips her hand away, but his fingers tighten around her wrist. When she blinks at him, he wets his lips. “You okay?” he asks. “And before you answer, keep in mind that I’m asking the _person_ Maria, not the attorney Maria. Because the attorney Maria’s always okay, no matter how much shit’s just ricocheted off the fan in the last five minutes.”

She huffs out a breath. “I’m not,” she admits quietly, “but that’ll improve once we find this guy.”

“Then I’ll do my best,” he says, and the words carry the weight of a very heavy promise. She smiles at him—at the way his eyes still study her face, at the feel of his thumb stroking against her wrist, at _all_ of him—and he smiles back.

She’s halfway out the door—or whatever you call the opening to his cubicle—when he asks, “You want to come over tomorrow?”

He keeps his voice low and his eyes trained toward the computer monitors, but there’s something about the set of his shoulders that transforms her veins to molten lava. She swallows. “It’s girl’s night, so—”

He glances over his shoulder. “After?”

She studies him for a moment—Jasper Sitwell, former cop and current special investigator, a handful of years her senior, and her first fuck-buddy since college—before she nods. “After,” she agrees, and snorts a laugh at his thousand-watt grin. 

 

==

 

“It’s not just that he said it, but that he thought he was being charming,” Peggy complains the next night. “How in the world do you look at a woman you claim to like—a woman you want to sleep with, according to your frankly horrifying text messages—and then say to her, ‘Well, you certainly aren’t getting any younger?’”

She punctuates the question with a wave of her pint glass as the rest of the group glances meaningfully toward the end of the table. Phil Coulson immediately abandons his beer to raise both hands. “Don’t look at me,” he defends. “I never seriously dated anyone of the female persuasion after high school. And more importantly, I held out for someone a good five years younger than me.”

He offers them all the kind of shit-eating grin that Maria only really finds charming when she’s drunk or discussing some of Wade Wilson’s more creative legal arguments, and Maria—who is not presently drunk, thank you—promptly rolls her eyes. Next to her, Pepper covers her mouth to keep from snorting her wine; across the table, Peggy’s fingers twitch like she just might fling her glass at the shiniest part of Phil’s rapidly balding head.

But it’s Jane Foster—sweet, kind, ink-stained Jane Foster—who glances up from a battered copy of last year’s _Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics_ to offer Phil a charming little smile. “Darcy has a taser I would be _more_ than happy to introduce you to if you keep talking,” she says innocently, and all of them, Phil included, erupt into laughter. 

The pretty college-aged waitress with the perky smile and perkier _assets_ swings by the table with their appetizers, and Maria resists her urge to roll her eyes at the chipper small talk. No matter how often they show up at Providence for their drinks and half-price “Ladies Night” appetizers—once a week, once a month, three Saturdays in a row thanks to Peggy’s latest boyfriend—they’re always blessed with a different but still _very_ attractive waitress in a tank top and boot-cut pants.

The wine’s cheap and the spinach-and-artichoke dip belongs in the land of milk and honey, but _man_ , Maria feels like an old spinster every damn time.

“I keep telling myself that it’s not my fault,” Peggy continues as she reaches for the hot wings, “but at the same time, I’m the one who picks them. I select wanker after wanker from Match’s database—”

“Your first mistake,” Jane intones, and Phil nods sagely.

“—and expect to somehow find a heart of gold under all their . . . ”

She waves a hand idly, and Pepper cocks an eyebrow. “Chauvinism?”

Peggy snorts. “I was leaning toward ‘rough edges,’ but that works quite nicely.”

“It’s not your fault that they’re all _men_ ,” Maria points out. Her friends all swivel to glance in her direction, and she shrugs. “I mean, that’s the common denominator, and that’s the problem. Men are pretty much naturally predisposed to be horrible—present company included.” Phil raises his glass in a tiny salute, and Maria grins at his smirk. “Let’s face the facts: half of the men out there are convinced that we shave and exfoliate just to draw them into our wicked web, and the other half complain about our Spanx and makeup while recoiling the second we skip them.” She reaches for her wine. “We literally can’t win for losing.”

She sips her wine, sets it down, and reaches for the spinach dip before she realizes that all four of her friends are still staring at her. She frowns. “What?”

Pepper shrugs. “Nothing.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re staring,” she points out, and both Peggy and Jane drop their eyes to their tiny appetizer plates. “You only do the creepy, synchronized staring thing when it’s deserved—or when Phil talks about the size of Barton’s d—”

“That was _once_ , and you force-fed me whiskey sours,” Phil complains.

“Once is more than enough, and don’t change the subject,” Maria fires back. He snorts at her as he reaches for the basket of pita chips, but she slides it away from him. They spend a full two seconds glaring at each other before he rolls his eyes and settles for some guacamole. “I’m not backing down just because—”

“We’re just wondering whether your new man-friend fits that chauvinistic asshole description from a minute ago.”

He crunches down on a tortilla chip, the same sort of petulant punctuation her brothers’d relied on at the family dinner table twenty years ago, and she grits her teeth to keep from rolling her eyes a second time. Across from her, Peggy picks apart a chicken wing while Jane flips a page in the journal she’s clearly not reading; at her shoulder, Pepper raises her eyebrows meaningfully and sips her wine. The silence that sweeps in around them is only really broken when the perky waitress returns with fresh drinks and a little bowl of queso (on the house). 

Finally, Maria sighs. “I don’t have a man-friend worth including,” she points out. Jane snorts, and Maria shoots her a sharp glance. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she reminds them for about the hundredth time. “I swore off dating a long time ago. The ashes of my first marriage license prove that.”

“Just like Tony’s long string of one-night-stands prove he’s incapable of commitment,” Pepper replies casually, and Peggy hides her grin behind her beer.

They drift off onto other topics after that—work, Natasha’s renewed hatred of hot yoga (because unlike Pepper, she’s a sensible human being who’d rather bathe in a tub than her own sweat), Astrid’s newest antics—and for the most part, Maria keeps up with the conversation. She laughs at the jokes, coos over all the adorable baby pictures, and definitely ignores every time her phone buzzes against her appetizer plate. At one point, Peggy quirks an eyebrow at the not-quite-subtle rattling, and Maria grabs it off the table to drop it into her purse.

It buzzes against her foot twice more before she excuses herself to the bathroom.

There’s six or seven missed text messages, and her stomach tightens a little when she realizes that they’re all from Jasper. She’s barely through the bathroom door before she’s unlocking her phone to open her message stream—and to, unsurprisingly, roll her eyes.

 **Him:** _you know, I never realized how weird it is that you bring Phil to your girl’s nights._

 **Him:** _he’s part of our guy’s nights, sometimes._

 **Him:** _granted, Melinda May is too, so maybe I need to reevaluate my gender bias._

 **Him:** _or maybe you need to come over, because I’m bored out of my skull and I’ve already seen this episode of Dateline._

 **Him:** _fabricate an emergency._

 **Him:** _I’ll order us those horrible fried artichokes if you do . . ._

She snorts at the last message, the one from only a few seconds ago, and is halfway through a _very_ eloquent defense of those same artichokes when the bathroom door swings open. She nods politely at the stranger—a blur of black and gold, probably some woman out on the Friday-night prowl—and plants her ass against the sink as she continues typing.

Or at least, until the stranger steps in front of Maria and Maria’s mouth dries out.

“You’re going to have to come clean at some point,” Pepper says simply. Maria tries to quickly shove her phone back into her pocket, but the damage’s already done: there’s heat climbing up her throat and spilling over onto her cheeks. Pepper cocks her head to one side, and Maria drops her eyes to the floor. “I know you think you’re being private, but between all the secretive texting and the weekend away—” 

“You have no way of knowing I spent that weekend with anyone else,” Maria cuts in. Pepper crosses her arms, her eyebrows raising in a silent but _very_ clear challenge, and Maria rolls her eyes. “I saw an opportunity to spend a weekend drinking wine in a claw-foot tub, and I took it. End of story.”

“After you tried to pawn it off on Natasha and me,” Pepper reminds her. Maria purses her lips, and her friend sighs. “I don’t care that you’re screwing around with someone,” she says after a beat. “That’s well within your right, and I certainly spent a _lot_ of time and energy trying to keep my relationship to myself in those fragile early days. But we’re your friends, and if you’re at risk of getting hurt—”

“With sex?” The question’s harder than Maria intends, a sharp spark of sound through the relative silence of the bathroom, and she shakes her head. “We made a deal,” she says after a couple seconds. “We— The first time was an accident, but an accident we liked, so we agreed to sex without the relationship. No emotional connection, no awkward family dinners, no cozy all-weekend sleepovers at one another’s houses. Just plain, uncomplicated sex.” 

Pepper worries her lower lip between her teeth. “And?”

“And what?” She narrows her eyes, and Maria shrugs. “It works. We have a drink or dinner, we screw, we carry on with our grown-up lives. That’s it. All the news that’s fit to print.” She huffs out a breath. “I know the rest of you are in continuous pursuit of the one true love story or whatever, but I’d rather blow off steam than—”

Pepper rolls her eyes. “And here’s where I’m calling you out on the lie.” Maria scowls at her, but Pepper just lifts her hands. “Because as much as I agree with everything you’re saying about no-strings-attached sex, I _don’t_ believe that’s what you’re doing.”

Maria snorts. “Because you’re the resident expert in fuck buddies and—”

“Because as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never run off to the bathroom to text someone unless you’re dating him.”

Maria presses her lips into a tight line at that, and she drops her gaze back to the floor just in time for her to watch Pepper’s heels stride into one of the stalls. She pushes off the sink and walks back out into the little hallway that separates the bathrooms from the bar itself, but for some strange, _stupid_ reason, that’s where she stops. Worse, it’s where she digs her phone out of her pocket and stares at her half-written defense of fried artichokes until it blurs gray in her vision.

She thinks back to the conversation with Jasper at the cabin and the way he’d lingered, hand on her back, for several minutes after. To the way he’d kissed her goodbye when she’d pulled into his driveway, and the freaking high school butterflies that’d rooted in her stomach when he’d waved to her from his front stoop.

She deletes the whole artichoke message to start a new one. _Listen, about tonight, I think it’s maybe a good idea if I—_

“Everything okay?” a voice asks suddenly, and she jerks her head up just as Phil appears in the doorway to the men’s room. They stare at each other for a moment, his whole face a perfect mask of friendly—maybe even brotherly—concern, before he finally nods toward the phone. “I figured you ducked out for a call or something, and I didn’t know—”

“Did everyone take a bathroom break at the same time?” Phil frowns at her, and she rolls her eyes. “Seriously, if Jane and Peggy show up right now, we will’ve completed the ‘harass Maria’ trifecta in record time.”

“Quartet,” Phil suggests. Maria snorts at him, and he shrugs. “Trifecta really only works if there’s three of us, and—”

She sighs. “Can I please just finish my text message?” 

“I wasn’t stopping you,” he defends, and grins when she wrinkles her nose at him. He tosses his balled-up paper towel into the waste basket with Barton-level precision and immediately heads back into the bar proper while humming along with the jukebox.

The quiet, private man Maria’d met on her first day at the district attorney’s office—well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-and-truly a lone wolf in the world—never would have hummed along with a Katy Perry song on Ladies Night.

She reopens the text message.

 _Are you this impatient for all the girls, or is it just because of my ass?_ she replies.

 _yeah, like it’s only your ass_ , Jasper immediately texts back, and she grins before sliding her phone back into her pocket. 

 

==

 

“You know Stark’s got the attention span of a goldfish and the curiosity of a cat, right?” Maria asks, and Jasper chuckles against the shell of her ear. It’s a breathless, searing sound, one that pools in the pit of her belly. When his teeth graze her skin, she groans and digs her fingernails into his shoulders. 

He slides a hand up the back of her thigh, and the chest freezer shudders as she presses closer to him. “Did you have a point, or were you just—”

“My point,” she cuts in, “is that Stark _will_ find us making out in his garage, and then where will we be?” 

He tips her back a few inches until she’s teetering on the freezer’s edge, and she’s not sure whether it’s the feeling of cold metal through her jeans or the way he rocks his hips that leaves her shuddering. “We’ll be making out in his garage,” he replies, and ducks his head to kiss her like they’re the last two people on the planet.

In retrospect, Maria’s not sure why exactly she’d trailed Jasper and his promise of shitty craft beer into the Stark-Banner garage—except, of course, to feel his rough hands sliding under her sweater as they neck against the freezer. They’d planned to meet at work and drive to Thanksgiving dinner together—an attempt to cut down on their respective carbon footprints and _not_ an excuse to screw before heading home for the night—but her dad’d called ten minutes before their meeting time and she’d ended up driving in alone. Jasper’d waited for her outside the house, hands in his pockets and a smirk nudging at the corners of his mouth.

“Subtle,” she’d informed him, but she’d purposely bumped their shoulders together before walking into the house.

But bumping shoulders feels inadequate when compared to kissing him in the cold and dark of Stark’s garage, her fingers digging his shirttails out of his slacks only to rake against the small of his back. He hisses and bites her lower lip as he pulls away, and she’s not ashamed to admit she chases the kiss. 

“You know exactly what I want to do to you, right?” he asks, his chest rising in ragged pants as he backs away. She hooks a leg around his thigh, hungry for more leverage, and he presses a hand to her hip. “And when I say ‘want to,’ I mean ‘am ten seconds from doing, Stark, Thanksgiving, and all our friends be damned.’”

Maria swallows. “I know.”

“Then we should probably—”

“Yeah, I know,” she repeats, and untangles her hands from his shirt for the express purpose of smoothing down her suddenly messy hair. 

They waste a few minutes adjusting their clothes while mulling over all the beer in the back corner of the garage. A shelving unit stocked with bottles labeled with a post-it reading _the poor man’s beer fridge_ looms nearby, which is funny when you consider the two-seat Audi parked nearby. Jasper grabs a couple different bottles—“And yes, you’ve tried this before and liked it,” he says about one, and Maria rolls her eyes—before leading her back into the chaos that is the Stark-and-Banner Thanksgiving extravaganza. They sample and swap their beers in the kitchen before wandering from conversation to conversation, their shoulders brushing incessantly as they greet their friends. Together, they admire Amy’s nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the sanitized elementary school Pilgrims and help tease Miles about his six Thanksgiving buttons (a gift, apparently, from Tony) before a shout from the kitchen draws Jasper away.

Maria’s left standing with Rhodey and his girlfriend Carol, and Rhodey grins as he gestures after Jasper. “You should know that that man is a serious miracle worker,” he says, and Carol promptly rolls her eyes. “Trust me on this one. I can’t count the number of barbeques he’s rescued.”

“It could just be that Tony’s a low bar to step over,” Maria suggests.

Carol blinks exactly once before she bursts out laughing. “I’ll toast to that,” she declares, and tips her beer bottle against Maria’s. Rhodey snorts at the two of them. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to introduce me to all your friends,” Carol informs him. “It’s not my fault I like this one already.”

Maria grins. “Another low bar set by Tony,” she notes. Carol’s cackle fills their corner of the living room and only really ebbs when Maria offers a hand. “I don’t think we’ve officially met, by the way,” she says, “but I’m Maria Hill.”

“Chief Assistant District Attorney Maria Hill, you mean,” Carol replies. “Your reputation’s _almost_ as big as Stark’s ego.”

“Please don’t let Tony know that,” Maria returns. Carol grins at her, all teeth, and she can’t help her own chuckle. “And your reputation’s not too bad, either. Even though I will admit I was in the back of the courtroom a couple months ago when you covered that hearing in front of Judge Hammersmith.”

The grin immediately drops off Carol’s face. “You mean when Bobby Drake forgot to mention the client was a deaf guy?” Rhodey’s snorted laugh transforms into a grunt when she elbows him hard in the ribs. “It’s not funny.”

“Sorry, babe, but it’s _always_ funny.”

“You know, I’ll remember that the next time you’re stuck in a hearing with a rookie translator and— Oh, wait, you’re _security_ , never mind.” She spits the word _security_ like it’s edged with acid, but Rhodey just rolls his eyes. She wrinkles her nose at him for a half-second before glancing back at Maria. “I’m sorry you had to suffer through that comedy of errors. I’d say it’ll never happen again, but Drake’s due to become a dad in April and I’m pretty sure I’m slated to be shamed a couple more times while he’s on paternity leave.”

“Call me. I’ll come watch.” Carol laughs at that, and Maria grins. “For what it’s worth—and aside from your complicated relationship with your coworker’s deaf clients—I admire what you do. From what I hear, our local legal aid office redefines the term ‘overworked and underpaid.’”

“You can say that again,” Rhodey mutters, but there’s something warm and almost proud in his tone. Carol shakes her head a little, but she also leans her weight against his side. “They want to expand,” he explains, “but with the county budget the way it is—”

“The best we can hope for is to hire a couple recent grads in July or August,” Carol finishes for him, her shoulders lifting in a tiny shrug. “I’m hoping to grab somebody else who gives two shits about veterans’ issues and disability—Drake’s great, but he handles a thousand and one _other_ things around the office, and I don’t want to stretch him too thin—and I know Emma wants someone to help lighten Wilson’s load.” 

Maria nearly chokes on a mouthful of beer. “You want another Wade Wilson?”

“Oh, _fuck_ no,” Carol replies emphatically. “No, one Wilson is about all I can handle. What we want—and need, really—is someone to balance his . . . ”

She waves her beer bottle in a tiny circle as she trails off, and Maria cocks an eyebrow. “Wade-ness?” she suggests.

“Wade-ness is the understatement of the year, but yeah.”

She shudders at her own statement, her face contorting so dramatically that Maria can hardly bite back her laugh. “I know exactly what you mean,” she promises, and Carol clinks their beer bottles together again. “But for the record, we’ve got a couple good interns this year—and a plastic porcupine, but that’s beside the point. Sharon really wants to do prosecution, but Darcy’s interested in pretty much any criminal law job. I can pass you her contact information if you think your boss’d be interested.”

Carol’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Darcy Lewis? As in the girl Wade dated last spring before he and Nate got their shit together?”

“If Nate’s the ‘freakishly attractive giant’ I keep hearing about, then yes,” Maria replies. Carol laughs and shakes her head, but Maria just shrugs. “As far as I know, there’s no bad blood between them, and if you’re really looking for someone to do criminal defense—”

“If it’ll get me on Emma’s good side, I’d take _six_ copies of Darcy’s contact information,” Carol instantly replies, and Maria smiles around the lip of her beer bottle.

It’s another ten minutes before they wander into the dining room for dinner—and another five minutes before Maria discovers that a five-year-old’s stuck a green leaf sticker to her place card and proudly declared her _alone forever_. “I’m so sorry,” Steve says, his face an alarming shade of red as he rubs the side of his neck. “A classmate’s parents are divorcing, and when she asked, I—”

“Yeah, well, somebody else might be down a husband by the end of the night if he’s not careful,” Maria informs the room, and Steve casts his eyes up at the ceiling while the rest of their friends laugh.

After they’re all seated and the dishes start circulating, Jasper leans over at steals Maria’s place card from under her fork. Within a few seconds, he’s peeled off the green sticker on his own card and added it to hers. The stems touch, almost like somebody pulled the leaves off of the same branch at the same time before sticking them to the back of an index card.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re as subtle as a train accident,” she says, her thumb brushing over the stickers.

He shrugs. “If we’ve got to be alone forever, at least we’re doing it together,” he murmurs, and if she nudges their knees together under the table, well, nobody needs to know. 

“You picked a good one,” someone comments long after dinner, and Maria glances over as Carol joins her in the far corner of the living room. The whole house’s quieted down, the rowdy family-style dinner a distant memory as they sip wine and wait for someone to remind Bruce and Tony about the four pies in their refrigerator. In the kitchen, Rhodey and Pepper help Tony rinse plates and load the dishwasher while Teddy and Bruce finish clearing off the table; in the living room, Jasper sits cross-legged on the floor to play Trivial Pursuit Junior with Amy, Dot, Natasha, Miles, Bucky, and Steve. From the sounds of it, Jasper’s a traitor who’s assisting at least one of the other two teams behind his own team’s back; as she pulls her eyes away, he’s helping Amy work out a complicated math word problem while Miles rolls his eyes.

Carol cocks an eyebrow at her, and she forces a smile. “I’m not sure—”

“You’re here with Sitwell, aren’t you?” Maria purses her lips, but Carol just shrugs. “I know Rogers’s kid thinks you’re going to die alone or whatever, but it’s pretty obvious—”

“We’re not a couple, if that’s what you mean,” Maria interrupts. Her voice feels unfamiliar, sort of half-strangled, and she watches as surprise flickers across Carol’s face. They stare at one another a moment as Maria ignores the heat spreading across her cheekbones. “I know what it looks like, sometimes,” she finally says, “but Jasper and I are friends. Just friends.”

“And not super-friends?” Carol suggests, her eyebrows rising suggestively. Maria snorts into her wine. “Hey, your business is your business. If I’m misinterpreting the situation, I’ll cop to it. I’m just also pretty familiar with the whole ‘playing footsie under the table at dinner’ thing.”

Maria swallows. “You’re the first person to notice.”

“Only because everyone else here’s been busy Stark-wrangling,” Carol counters. Maria rolls her eyes to keep from laughing, and Carol immediately grins at her. She looks about ready to add another comment, too, but then a shout of triumph rises up from the coffee table and distracts them both. When they glance over, Dot and Jasper are exchanging an exaggerated high-five over Steve’s head while Steve scowls at both of them. Miles mimics his pseudo-uncle’s frown, too, and Bucky and Natasha both hide their snickering as the teen launches into a long speech about cheaters and teamwork. 

Maria almost laughs at all of them when she suddenly realizes that Jasper’s watching her. His gaze is so warm and full of promise that she swears in that instant her heart swells up until it chokes her. She flashes him a shaky half-second smile before she forces her eyes away.

Next to her, Carol snorts. “You were saying?” 

Maria shoots her a sharp glance, but her next breath escapes as a sigh. “It’s complicated.”

“Oh, I know complicated,” Carol promises. Her gaze drifts slowly away until she’s staring off into the kitchen, her attention focused on Rhodey and literally nothing else. He’s caught in a conversation with Tony, and they laugh together as they load the dishwasher.

Carol shakes her head. “Jim and I met at a shitty club downtown on my best friend’s birthday,” she explains with a tiny shrug. “We danced until Wilson—as in Wade—decided to drink himself stupid and throw up all over my shoes, and trust me when I say that I _never_ expected Jim to call after that spectacle.” 

“Except he did?” Maria guesses.

“The next day. Asked me out for a drink. And after that drink? He asked me out for dinner.” She huffs out a breath before her gaze drifts back to Maria. “We did that for _months_. No labels, no pressure to be something specific to one another. Just drinks, dinners, movies—and all the fringe benefits.” The corner of her mouth kicks up into a crooked grin. “I’m still not sure I want to call it a relationship, some days.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “Says the woman who’s here with her boyfriend on Thanksgiving.”

“Exactly,” Carol replies, and she clinks their glasses together one last time before wandering off to join Rhodey in the kitchen. 

 

==

 

That night, Jasper cards his fingers through Maria’s hair as she starts to roll away from him, his eyes half-hooded in the dark. “You could stay,” he says. “It’s late, we’re full of wine, and you could stay.”

“It’s not that late, and that’s rule number four,” Maria reminds him, and kisses him long and sweet before she climbs out of bed.

 

==

 

“With all due respect, your honor—”

“I’m not finished, Miss Hill,” Judge Thea Nguyen interrupts, and Maria clenches her jaw shut. At the defense table, Loki Laufeyson leans back in his chair, his shiny green silk tie glinting in the bright overhead lights. 

For one, shameful second, she considers reaching over and strangling him with the damn thing, but then, the judge sighs. 

“I recognize this is a complicated case,” she says, her fingers rubbing against her forehead. “The allegations against Mister Stone are serious, and I understand why the officers might have understood the shouting to indicate danger. But they second they realized he was playing a video game and _not_ in any real danger, they should have left the room.”

Maria sucks in a sharp breath. “But—”

“I’m willing to give the State two weeks to look further into the case and see if _any_ exceptions to the warrant requirement apply,” the judge continues with a quick shake of her head. “We can discuss inevitable discovery and standing issues at that time, as well. But right now, I am ruling that Mister Stone’s shouts alone did not give the officers probable cause to walk into the kitchen and find the methamphetamine there.” She folds her hands atop the case file and levels Maria a very stern glance. “Anything else?”

Maria swallows back the frustration that bubbles up in the back of her throat. “No, your honor.”

“Mister Laufeyson?”

Laufeyson slides from his seat like a snake slithering out of a wicker basket for its charmer. “Absolutely not, Judge Nguyen.”

The judge nods. “Then I’ll see you both in two weeks. We’re adjourned.”

The judge’s secure door is still swinging shut when Maria grabs her files and strides out of the courtroom, fully aware that Laufeyson’s grinning at her back. Outside, the hallway’s packed to bursting with dozens upon dozens of strangers. Civil litigators wait impatiently for hearings and meetings while barking orders into their cell phones; criminal defendants shift nervously as Bucky rounds them up for a docket call in front of Judge Brassels; a Suffolk County Child Services lawyer stands on a bench and hollers out the name of man who’s supposed to be in a paternity hearing. Maria’s halfway to the back stairwell, weaving in and out of the throng like a stunt racer speeding down the highway, when she remembers suddenly that Sharon Carter’d agreed to wait for her outside Judge Nguyen’s courtroom.

When she whirls around, she almost collides with Sharon. They both yelp.

“Sorry, Miss Hill,” Sharon stammers, and she brushes her long hair out of her face before reaching for Maria’s stack of files. “The hallway was too packed, and when I tried to call out to you—”

“It’s okay,” Maria cuts in. Within seconds, they’re heading back down the hallway, their footfalls perfectly even as they finally break out of the crowd. “Anything important happen while Laufeyson handed me my ass on a platter?”

“Uh, not really,” the intern answers, glancing down at her legal pad. “Special Investigator Sitwell had to leave to do something for Coulson, but he wanted you to know that he’s got—and I’m quoting him—‘fuck all’ on the witness from the Broderick case.” Maria groans as she shoves the door to the stairwell open, and Sharon frowns. “How bad is that?”

“Bad enough that I’m not ruining your optimistic outlook on life by explaining it,” Maria retorts. The intern huffs a laugh, but it’s quickly drowned out by the echo of their high heels against the concrete stairs. “What else?”

“Mister Stark—” 

“You really don’t have to call him that.”

“—just finished reading the first draft of the Killgrave brief and left it on your desk. It’s about ninety percent sticky notes and highlighter marks.” Maria rolls her eyes. “Grant finished up the research for the Stone case—pretty unfortunate name for a meth dealer, by the way—and wants you to review it before he starts writing the memo.”

Maria snorts. “Because god forbid he show ten seconds of initiative,” she mutters.

Sharon hides her smirk behind her legal pad. “Wade Wilson called to confirm your meeting on Wednesday, and then to ask whether you could switch it to Thursday, and then one _more_ time to say that Wednesday’s okay after all.” She shrugs. “He also wanted to know whether American Girl dolls are a good investment, so I transferred the call to Darcy.”

“Thank god for the sensible interns,” Maria says, and Sharon grins.

The district attorney’s office is just as chaotic as the first floor when they finally emerge from the stairwell, a wall of sound and activity that almost drives Maria back down the stairs in search of silence. She thanks Sharon before heading straight for her office, and for the first time in two weeks, she dodges Barton _without_ spilling his coffee on either of them.

“You’re learning!” he shouts after her, and laughs when she flips him off over her shoulder.

“Wilson called,” Peggy greets as Maria swings by her cubicle for a fresh stack of case files, and Maria promptly rolls her eyes. “I know that he’s on your list of least favorite people right now—”

“And every other day of the month,” Maria reminds her.

“—but he really wants to work out this sentencing issue before it lands in front of the judge.” She pauses. “He also wants to buy his boyfriend’s daughter something called—”

“An American Girl doll.” Peggy’s whole face creases into a frown. Maria waves it off. “They’re overpriced historical dolls with a wide range of clothing and accessories.”

“And once again, I’m grateful to be English,” Peggy replies with a grin, and Maria laughs as she carries her files back into her office.

She loses a few minutes to checking her e-mail and sorting her case files into order of urgency before she remembers Wade’s phone call and the Wednesday afternoon meeting they’ve spent three weeks trying to arrange. She digs through her piles of paperwork, notes, and the rough draft of the Killgrave brief until she finally unearths her calendar. The binder clip in the top corner forces her to flip right to November, and she flicks loose hair from her eyes as she reaches for a pen.

Except she stops when her eyes land on the date.

It’s the last day in November, a frigid gray Monday that’d required her to dig out her thickest gloves and scarf, but that’s not the part of the calendar she’s focused on. Instead, she stares at the little red asterisk that’s beside the date, the reminder that pops up every month, come hell or high water.

She’s a walking thirty-day clock. She’s been a walking thirty-day clock since age fourteen. Even through college and law school, through studying for the bar exam, through her divorce, she’s been able to place a little red asterisk at even thirty-day intervals all through her calendar.

She flips back to September, where she’d crossed over the asterisk once everything’d kicked off. 

And she flips back to October, where the asterisk still burns red in her vision.

She’s still studying the three dates—September, October, November—when someone suddenly knocks on her doorframe. She jumps in her chair, her whole body jerking like a badly controlled marionette, and Phil frowns at her from the doorway. “Am I interrupting?”

“Just updating my calendar,” she informs him, even though her heart’s still in her throat. She finds a pen and scribbles down her meeting with Wade before it leaves her mind forever. “What do you need?”

“Nick wants us to do a run-down of our open felony cases, see where we’re at. I told him I didn’t know your schedule, but—”

“I’m good to do it now,” she promises. “Five minutes?”

He smiles. “That’s what I figured you’d say.” She nods unevenly, her eyes drifting back down to the stupid red mark at the end of November. She’s still staring at it, the sharp lines turning fuzzy in her vision, when Phil asks, “You okay?”

She forces herself to smile. “Absolutely,” she answers, and slams the calendar shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The posting schedule through the end of Harmless Error can be found [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/110384496162/as-promised-here-is-the-updated-mpu-schedule). Also, I do plan on replying to comments this weekend. I've been up to my eyebrows in various responsibilities, and comments fell by the wayside. I will try to be better, I swear.


	4. December

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In December, Jasper corners two teenagers in an alley because it beats Isabelle Hartley’s nosy questions. He also attends a bachelor’s party _and_ a Christmas party, because it’s just that time of the year. And if his feelings for certain Chief Assistant District Attorneys refuse to ebb, well, that’s nothing to worry about. At least, not too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Karolina Dean](http://marvel.wikia.com/Karolina_Dean_%28Earth-616%29) and [Molly Hayes](http://marvel.wikia.com/Molly_Hayes_\(Earth-616\)) are characters from Marvel’s Runaways. I know only bits and pieces about them, but for the record: yes, all those kids are running around somewhere in this world. 
> 
> I substantially edited one of the scenes after my beta-readers combed through it, so any errors are officially my own. Speaking of my beta-readers: they are masterworks of nature and make my words better. Jen, saranoh, I thank you both.

“I think it’s time we talked about your little girlfriend,” Hartley says on the first Saturday in December, and Jasper rolls his eyes.

It’s a cold, bleak winter’s day outside the car, and their breath’s just warm enough that you can see the rough outline of where Hunter drew a dick on one of the back windows. All along the dashboard, there’s photographs and case notes, a rough outline of the four or five teenage runaways they’re hunting down for Odinson’s latest juvenile offender nightmare. There’s a half-eaten container of French fries in the cup holder, two mostly empty water bottles in the passenger foot well, and staticky Christmas music on the radio. All in all, it feels like a flashback to some of his least favorite cases when he worked for the police department, only with less pay and more Hartley-shaped aggravation.

Worse, they’re only on the third of six hours together.

He rubs his face with a hand. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

Hartley chuckles. “As much as I’ve prayed that day will come, both you _and_ I know that’s a blatant lie.” He shoots her a tight glare, and she raises her hands. “Just calling your continued crush like I see it.”

“I thought you wanted to help me find these kids.”

“Funny how men always forget about a little thing called ‘multitasking.’” He snorts at that and reaches for one of the pictures, but Hartley catches his wrist. Even though she keeps her fingernails short and blunt—and never, _ever_ ask for an explanation on why—they dig painfully into his skin. He grits his teeth to keep from hissing. “You can’t dodge these questions forever,” she reminds him. “Not when all your friends _and_ the rest of my team—”

“And whose fault is that one?” he mutters.

“—can tell this whole ‘friends-with-benefits’ thing is still bothering you. And it _is_ bothering you.” The second she loosens her grip a little, he jerks his arm away, and they spend a very long time staring at each other in the chilly, humid car.

He rolls his lips together as he rubs his wrist. “There’s nothing wrong with the status quo,” he says quietly.

“Bullshit,” Hartley returns, and immediately cranks up the radio.

Jasper huffs out a sigh and grabs the nearest file before she changes her mind about sulking. The case Thor’s prosecuting involves a roving pack of teenage squatters, and the last known address of two of the five—Karolina Dean and Molly Hayes—suggests that they’re hanging out here, an abandoned warehouse on the furthest edge of town. The friend (ex-friend, maybe) who’d ratted them out a couple days earlier swore they ventured out two or three times a day for food or to meet up with other friends, but the further the cold creeps into Jasper’s veins, the more he wonders whether the friend lied.

He studies Karolina and Molly’s pictures—they’re both pretty blonde girls, with an emphasis on the word _girl_ —and flips idly through the file, but of course, his mind wanders. He’s spent the last couple weeks on wild goose chase after wild goose chase, and right now, he feels like he’s running on empty. Maria’s key witness Jason Davidson remains in the wind despite his _and_ Hartley’s better attempts to pin him down, a handful of frat boys who’re testifying in a restitution hearing next week keep avoiding his phone calls, and he’s wasted the better part of this week unsuccessfully tracking Thor’s other three runaways. If he ends his Saturday the way he started it—hungry, frustrated, and empty-handed—he’s pretty sure Fury’ll rip his head off and use it as a soccer ball.

And he’s just about to break into what he swears is the tenth fucking rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” they’ve heard that morning to tell Hartley exactly that when somebody knocks on the window pane.

He jerks in his seat like someone’s just poked him with a cattle prod, and Hartley immediately starts laughing. “Every fucking time,” she wheezes.

Jasper smacks her with the file before he rolls down the window. “Haven’t you heard of a fucking cell phone?” he demands.

“And rob both myself _and_ Izzy of watching you squirm? Perish the thought, mate.”

Deep down in his heart of hearts, Jasper knows that Lance Hunter’s crooked smile is both charming and disarming, but right now, he just wants to punch Hunter in his stupid face. Hunter appears to sense it, too, because he immediately leans into the window to deposit two piping hot coffees in the cup holders. “Petrol station clerk said he hasn’t seen either girl all day, despite the fact that they normally swing by around this time,” he explains as he hands Hartley a couple creamer tubs. “He thinks maybe the cold snap’s driven them somewhere warmer, like a motel.”

Hartley raises her eyebrows. “But?” 

“But everything he said besides the bit about the motel makes these girls sound like creatures of habit.” Hunter steals the last of their cold fries before he ducks back out of the car. “If I were a member of the teenage wasteland—”

“You really don’t get bonus points for quoting The Who,” Jasper mutters. Hartley snorts into her coffee. 

“—I’d be hunkered down until the worst of the cold clears, not trying my luck with the seediest Motel 6 this side of the interstate.” Hunter shrugs. “They’re probably still in the building.”

“While you’re still out here, eating old fries and chatting about the weather,” Jasper reminds him.

He grins. “I’m here to charm clerks and sniff out suspicious-looking strangers. I’ll happily leave the hard stuff to Bobbi.”

“And that, along with your pathological inability to trust any living human other than yourself, is why she’s now your _ex_ -wife,” Hartley points out. He immediately chokes on the last of his fries, but she ignores it to toss him a spare pair of gloves. “Do yourself and the rest of us a favor and help Bobbi sweep the warehouse. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to help, and you know how I feel about the cold.”

Hunter rolls his eyes. “You spent one winter in Greece and you act like—”

“ _Go_ ,” she snaps, and her employee mutters one bitter _yeah, yeah, yeah_ before he trudges back across the barren warehouse parking lot.

By the time Jasper’s rolled up the window and cranked the heat back to blast furnace levels, the radio’s switched over to a commercial. It’s an old one where a woman barters with Santa Claus in an attempt to receive a diamond necklace on Christmas morning, and he leans back against the headrest as he listens to the entirely too familiar dialogue. The cheap gas station coffee tastes like ash, the air in the car’s stale, and the entire afternoon feels more like something out of _The Hunger Games_ than the first proper weekend of advent.

“You exchanging Christmas gifts?” Hartley asks after a couple long seconds. She’s staring out the window, coffee cup balanced on her knee as she studies the miserable gray sky. 

Jasper raises his eyebrows. “With?”

She rolls her eyes. “You know who.”

He resists the urge to bang his face against the steering wheel and settles for rubbing his forehead instead. “Probably not,” he answers finally. “Exchanging gifts feels a little, I don’t know—”

“Like something you’d only do if you were actually dating?” Hartley suggests.

“I wanted to say ‘familiar,’ but if you want to go with _that_ , then—”

There’s a whole fucking lot more to that sentence—hell, there’s a whole conversation that follows, one that’s chock full of intimate details and the way Maria’d practically climbed him like a tree after Thanksgiving at Stark’s—but the whole thing’s suddenly interrupted by a massive crash. Within a half-second, Jasper’s out of the car and reaching for the holster that Fury’d really prefer he _not_ wear on his belt all the damn time; another full second later, and Hartley’s out too, her coffee spilling onto the broken asphalt of the parking lot. For a couple moments, silence sweeps around them along with optimistic little snow flurries, and Jasper wonders whether they’d imagined the noise.

Then, another crash rings out across the empty lot, and the door at the top of the warehouse’s fire escape flies open. 

The warehouse is three stories tall, this squat old building with yellowed windows in some places and plywood boards in others, and the fire escape’s rusted and rickety as hell. Jasper knows this because it shakes when two girls—both under eighteen, both blonde—rocket out the door and start running down it, their hair and scarves streaming behind them like capes. “Shit,” Jasper mutters, and he forgets about his gun to start charging across the parking lot in the direction of the fire escape.

He’s all of ten feet from the car when Hunter and Bobbi Morse burst out after the girls, their voices echoing through the cold winter sky. “If you didn’t come blundering into _everything_ like you’re trying to win a contest—”

“Oh, so this is my bloody fault?” Hunter shouts, and Jasper swears he hears Hartley curse under her breath behind him. “Because it bears repeating that only _one_ of us noticed the extension cords and the space heater, and that one of us is—”

“Will you shut the fuck up and _get_ them?” Hartley roars, and both of her employees freeze on the fire escape’s first shaky landing. The girls pause too, the younger one clinging to the hand rail for a few seconds until the other one drags her along. In an instant, they’re on the second-to-last flight of stairs a good hundred and fifty yards from where Jasper’s standing, and he knows without a second thought that Hunter and Bobbi have the best chance of pinning them down.

They apparently realize that at the same time, because they immediately start charging down the steps in twos and threes.

The whole thing plays out in a weird sort of slow motion after that, the kind where every step and decision feels a little bit like an out-of-body experience. Jasper’s breath clouds his vision and fogs his glasses as he keeps running toward the fire escape, his heart hammering in the back of his throat and his lungs burning in the cold. The older girl stops on the last landing to help the younger one down—there’s a good ten-foot drop between that and the ground, and the kid shrieks as she hits the asphalt—but once the little one shouts that she’s okay, her friend swivels back around to face the stairs. Hunter’s eight or nine steps in front of Bobbi, running hard and with no intention of stopping, and the older girl squares her shoulders.

“Shit,” Hartley spits under her breath, and before Jasper can blink, she’s surging forward to run in front of him.

In the same instant, the girl surges up the steps, ducks her head, and topples Hunter right over her back.

From where Jasper’s still standing on the pavement, he thinks maybe Hunter’ll catch himself somehow, but Hunter’s shocked shout instantly proves just how wrong that assumption really is. He plunges face-first onto the fire escape landing, groaning aloud, and the girl spends one split-second shaking herself off before she’s swinging off the last steps and joining her friend down on the ground. They immediately start running again, this time around the corner of the building, and Jasper hardly pauses before charging after them.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s vaguely aware of Hartley shouting for Hunter and Hunter confirming that he’s all right.

He’s only sure about those two things when he realizes that Bobbi Morse is running at his side, a blur of black leather jacket and blonde hair as she trails after the kids.

They run for what feels like a hundred miles, around the warehouse and toward the maze of storage units next door, and Jasper only notices that they’ve managed to corner the girls when one of them slams against the chain-link fence that separates one property from the next. The older girl, clearly Karolina, grabs Molly to boost her over the fence, but they both freeze when Bobbi shouts, “Stop!”

They pivot to look at her, wide-eyed and panting, and Jasper grasps the edge of a nearby dumpster to keep from falling over. He swears he’s wheezing.

“We didn’t do anything,” Karolina says as Molly curls her fingers around the fence links. “Alex and everybody, they trashed that place on their own, and we didn’t—” 

“We know,” Jasper cuts in. He’s still leaning hard against the dumpster, his breath shaking as he tries to catch it. Karolina steps back a few inches, her hands curling into fists; a couple feet away, Bobbi squares her shoulders threateningly. He rolls his eyes. “Seriously? You’re going to intimidate a sixteen-year-old like you’re in the judo ring?”

Bobbi scowls at him. “A sixteen-year-old who knocked Hunter down the stairs.”

“Like you’ve never considered doing the exact same thing.” Still backed against the chain link fence, Molly giggles. Jasper flashes her a half-second smile. “Right response.”

“You’re lying,” Karolina snaps. When he raises his eyebrows, she steps in front of Molly, shielding her from view. “Nico said the cops were looking for us and wanted to haul us off to jail. Or worse, split us up and send us to group homes, and we can’t—”

“Do we look like the police?” Jasper cuts in. She blinks in surprise, and he raises both his hands. “Okay, admittedly, I look a little like a cop,” he corrects, “but does _she_ look like one?” Karolina glances over to Bobbi and rolls her lips together. “Did the guy you tripped down the stairs? Did his _boss_?”

Karolina shifts her weight slightly. “If you’re not a cop, what are you?”

“I’m a special investigator with the district attorney’s office. My friends are part of a private security and investigation firm. And you two,” he says, nodding to the girls, “are very, _very_ hard to find.”

Molly pokes her head out from behind Karolina’s shoulder to grin at him, but Karolina just crosses her arms. “We pride ourselves on that.”

“So I’m learning.”

“If we’re not in trouble, what do you want?” Molly asks carefully. Karolina whips around to glare at her, but she pushes herself away from the fence to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her friend. “We’re not really used to people looking for us when we’re not in trouble, but if you swear we’re not—”

“Cross my heart,” Jasper says. 

Bobbi, predictably, rolls her eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, the girls are loaded down with information about the case Thor’s prosecuting, multiple copies of Jasper’s business card, and a crumpled wad of cash and change collected from Jasper’s and Bobbi’s pockets. “Come into the office on Monday,” he says for the fifth time, his hand clasped around Karolina’s. “Assure Thor—Mister Odinson—that you weren’t involved in ransacking that store. Because if you’ll help us—”

“Then we’ll get help.” Karolina purses her lips, her eyes flitting across Jasper’s expression. “And nobody will throw us in detention? Or cart us off to a group home?”

“Not if I can help it,” he promises, and Karolina nods.

He and Bobbi walk the girls back to the warehouse’s loading dock, and both teens shake his and only his hand before they disappear behind a door that’s already hanging off its hinges. Bobbi holds her jaw tight the entire time, her arms crossed over her chest. 

“You’re pissed,” Jasper observes once the broken door swings shut.

She snorts and shakes her head. “Frustrated, not pissed.”

“About the fact they tripped Hunter down the stairs?”

“About how I’m going to spend the next six weeks listening to him brag about his heroism in the face of danger.” Jasper huffs out a little laugh at that, and Bobbi nudges their shoulders together before she heads off in the direction of the parking lot. They’re just falling into stride when she asks, “Isabelle ask you about your girlfriend yet?”

He rolls his eyes. “You guys need a better hobby.”

She grins. “Than dissecting your love life? No chance in hell.”

After a few more seconds of comfortable silence, Bobbi uncrosses her arms. “You know,” she comments, “you’re weirdly good with messed-up kids.”

Jasper shrugs. “They’re a lot easier to deal with than the adults I hang out with,” he replies, and laughs when she shoves him into the nearest wall. 

 

==

 

 **M. Hill:** _Clint’s still out at his bachelor’s party._

 **M. Hill:** _Correction: Clint’s still out at his bachelor’s party, and as a consequence, I am being forced to listen to an ode to his ass. According to Phil, it won’t quit, and he’s offering pictures to prove it._

Standing in his still-dark kitchen, Jasper presses his lips together and works very hard not to snicker aloud. _sounds like another ass I know_ , he types back.

_Keep talking like that, and this ass is heading straight home after she pours her friend into bed._

He grins to himself. _like you could resist._

_Try me._

_get over here, and we’ll try all kinds of things._

The next message consists only of an eye-roll emoticon, and Jasper can’t help but laugh a little as he ditches his phone to start fiddling with the coffee pot. There’s a spark of something stupid and hopeful that keeps swimming around in his stomach, a shiver he feels from the inside out. If he’s honest with himself, it’d started swimming to the surface around the time Maria’d first pressed her knee against his under the crowded bar table at the start of the night; by the time Fury’d finished his sweet-enough-to-kill-a-diabetic speech about Phil deserving a good life with his guy and Maria’d hidden her wet eyes by staring down at her soda, the feeling’d treaded water with the best of them. Now, it’s practically the Michael Phelps of blind, boneheaded hope, and he’s so distracted by the way it races around in the pit of his stomach that he ends up adding two or three more scoops of coffee to the filter than necessary.

He considers dumping it out into the trash until he remembers that Maria likes her coffee strong enough to burn through her stomach lining.

And _then_ , he considers beating his head against the fucking wall for even considering that Maria might spend the night.

He busies himself with a thousand little chores around the house while he waits for another text: emptying the garbage, dropping abandoned socks in the laundry basket, replacing a burnt-out lightbulb in the spare bedroom he only uses when distant relatives wander into town. If he checks his watch a half-dozen times, hey, that’s his business. Same with the phantom text buzzes in his pocket and the shot of tequila he downs in his kitchen to drown his nerves.

He’s actually considering a second shot—liquid courage, maybe, or liquid comfort—when there’s a knock at the front door.

Maria walks into his front hall like she owns the place, so confident and self-possessed that Jasper only notices the wild spark in her eyes when she grabs him his collar and kisses him hard enough to bruise. He grunts a little, mostly in surprise but also a _tiny_ bit in want, and he’s barely allowed enough time to push the front door closed before she backs him into the wall. She tastes like coffee and smells like wind and snow, but Jasper melts against her anyway, his hands trailing down her back and sides without his permission. Like he’s planning to memorize the curve of her body before he pulls her all the way into his grip, he thinks. Like he’s forcing his brain to create some kind of permanent etching for when it all slip-slides away.

He wonders, sometimes, if they’re on the brink of that kind of ending.

Then, Maria curls her fingers against the back of his neck and nips the inside of his lower lip, and he forgets how to wonder altogether.

They’re halfway to the bedroom, his shirt and her sweater both abandoned on the hallway floor and his hands running through her windswept hair, when she pulls away and shoves him against the nearest wall. Even panting like a marathon runner, he still grins at her. “You’re demanding as shit,” he says, “and I like it.”

“I noticed,” she assures him, and there’s that wild spark again, lighting up her whole face as her hands wander just south of his belt. He rolls his hips against her palm, and she grins. “I just wanted to make sure all that craft beer didn’t go to your head.”

Jasper snorts. “You know I can hear the unspoken ‘shitty’ every time you say ‘craft beer,’” he reminds her—and bites back a groan when her light, half-hearted tease morphs into a proper, knee-buckling _squeeze_. She wets her lips, and for a second, his heart pounds hard enough that he swears he feels his ribs shudder.

He forces that and all the other feelings down and grabs her wrist. Within another second or two, she’s pinned against the wall instead, one of his legs pressing between hers while all his _interest_ digs into her hip. She moans against his mouth when he kisses her, her fingers raking over his chest, and when he shivers this time, it’s not just on the inside. 

“Never,” he says between kisses, when they’re sharing breath and grappling for purchase against the wall. “It’d take half a brewery to knock me on my ass hard enough that I couldn’t get going for you.”

The end of the sentence’s a whisper, hardly audible between their greedy kisses and greedier sighs of _want_ , but Maria shoves him hard in the shoulder anyway. He stumbles backward a little, his feet caught in the clothes on the floor, and he only catches himself because there’s another wall behind him. In the dim light, they stare at each other: Maria in her black bra and her jeans, him in his slacks, both of them panting and flushed from kissing.

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Maria—”

“You mean that?”

Her voice quakes in a way he’s never heard before, and he wastes a second or two just blinking at her like a dumbass. And in those two seconds, her half-covered in shadow and with her hair a fucking mess from the wind and his fingers, she’s just _Maria_.

Not fearless, confident, ball-busting Maria Hill from the district attorney’s office. No, she’s wise-cracking, wine-drinking, trail-hiking Maria, and everything about her is fucking perfect.

He swallows hard. “Yeah,” he admits. “I don’t say shit I don’t mean.”

For one, tiny moment, Jasper expects her to grab her sweater off the floor and walk right out his front door, never to return.

Instead, she grabs _him_ , kisses him, and never says another word.

 

==

 

“Your coffee tastes like ass and your Chinese food’s rancid,” Maria complains as she crawls back into his bed the next morning, a steaming mug clutched between her hands.

Jasper rolls his eyes. “Nice to see you, too,” he deadpans, and presses his face into her bare thigh.

 

==

 

“Okay, Hunter is officially not gonna survive the night if I have to keep listening to that damn story.”

The voice—a dark, deep voice that rumbles through the quiet of Victoria’s home office like distant thunder—materializes out of exactly nowhere, and Jasper almost leaps out of his fucking skin as he whirls around. In the doorway, a shadow looms. Not just any shadow, either, but a big, broad, kill-you-where-you-stand kind of shadow, the kind that shows up in every nightmare and Stephen King novel known to man.

For a second, Jasper fights against a very undignified and unmanly scream.

And then, the shadow flicks on the overhead light. “Sorry, man,” says one of Hartley’s stray friends, his green-and-red plaid shirt firmly cementing him as one of the Christmas party guests rather than, you know, a serial killer. “I just figured you came in to avoid Hunter and might want some company.”

Jasper snorts. “I’m always avoiding Hunter,” he replies, and the other guy grins.

Hartley and Victoria—because referring to them as the “Hartley-Hands” only ends in a lot of scowling and arm-slugging, depending on which one hears you say it—live in this ancient monster of a house on the older side of town, the kind of place that’s constructed entirely of built-in bookcases, fancy wood trim, windows that don’t seal right, and black mold. Either by design or dumb luck, Victoria’s private little nerd cave is mostly safe of the latter two pitfalls, complete with fancy damask wallpaper and gleaming bookshelves stuffed full of hardbacks. Add in the leather furniture, and you’d think the room belongs to some Victorian-age doctor with money to burn.

Except the hardbacks are thrift-store finds that Victoria’s never read and her private collection of books (mostly Sookie Stackhouse novels) live in the spare bedroom down the hall. Jasper’s just not supposed to know that shit.

Of course, he’s not supposed to sneak off and hide from a Christmas party with nothing but a beer as company, but that’s a whole other story.

“How bad’s he being?” he asks after a couple seconds, and the guy—Matt, maybe? Jasper’s shit with names—blinks at him. He shrugs. “You’re avoiding Hunter and his tales of fake heroism, right? How many flights of imaginary stairs is he falling down tonight? Six? Seven?”

Maybe-Matt grins. “Hartley’s secretary’s hanging around down there, so three.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “He knows that girl’s totally in love with Hartley, right?”

“The day Hunter’s able to sniff out somebody’s sexuality without a ten-step guide and a roadmap’s a cold day in hell,” the other guy replies, and despite himself, Jasper laughs.

The laugh apparently counts as some kind of invitation, though, because Matt (Mike?) finally wanders into the room. “You’re Jasper, right? Isabelle’s old police academy buddy and part of the drinking nights Hunter always invites me and Trip to crash?”

Jasper frowns. “And suddenly, I’m afraid of what rumors the supposedly discreet private investigators are spreading around.”

“For the right price, I just might be persuaded to tell you.” He almost rolls his eyes again, but Matt-or-Mike just sticks out his hand. “Alphonso Mackenzie, but my friends call me Mack.”

Jasper snorts. “My friends call me a lot worse than ‘Mack,’ but good to meet you.”

Mack’s grin bunches all his laugh lines, and for the first time in his thirty-eight years, Jasper understands why some authors insist on using the phrase _infectious grin_. He tries to return the favor, to force a little holiday cheer tit-for-tat into the conversation, but the whole thing feels forced. Worse, the stereo downstairs blares “Jingle Bell Rock” at a volume that rattles his fillings.

He’s swigging his beer in an attempt to glue them back down when Mack asks, “You going through a breakup, or is this just the usual ‘lonely at Christmas’ blues?”

He asks the question like an aside—no big deal, just a new friend with a friendly inquiry—but Jasper almost chokes on his beer anyway. Mack leans against Victoria’s desk in sort of a practiced slouch, but somehow, Jasper still feels like he’s under the world’s least-subtle microscope.

He swallows. “Who says it’s either?”

Mack shrugs. “Maybe my instinct’s a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure the only time a guy looks your level of glum at a holiday party is when he’s nursing a breakup or just feeling lonely for the holidays.” Jasper huffs out a breath at that, shaking his head, but Mack raises an eyebrow. “You saying I’m wrong?”

“I’m saying it’s a long, complicated story that nobody wants to hear.”

Mack’s laugh actually drowns out the continued peppy echo of the world’s worst Christmas song. “If it keeps me from hearing version number twenty-seven of how Hunter faced down certain death in the form of a sixteen-year-old girl, then I am _all_ yours.”

Jasper actually chuckles a little at that, but Mack— Mack just keeps studying him with those steady, dark eyes. Someday, Mack’ll come up against a staring contest he can’t win, but today is definitely not that day. Worse, his whole expression’s open and _earnest_ , and it cuts Jasper so deep that he winds up glancing down at his beer just to avoid eye contact. 

“When I started at the district attorney’s office, after I left the force,” he starts, “I met a woman.”

Mack snorts a little at that, and Jasper jerks his head up. “Sorry,” he says, raising his hands. “Just didn’t take you as the ‘love at first sight’ type.”

“It was mostly ‘lust at first snide comment,’ actually,” Jasper replies with half a shrug, and Mack laughs. For the first time, Jasper realizes the guy’s armed with a coffee mug—probably full of Bailey’s with a splash of coffee, knowing Victoria. “I met a woman,” Jasper repeats after a beat, “and she— I don’t even know how to describe her. Funny, smart, gorgeous, great to be around. Witty as hell. Passionate about her job. Better yet, passionate about _justice_ , which is a tall fucking order sometimes.” He shakes his head. “For months, I thought about asking her out, but she was recently divorced and pretty loud about how she planned on staying that way. Very ‘all men must die.’”

Mack grimaces. “Ouch, man.”

“For about five minutes, sure. But the thing about her—the magic of the whole situation, really—was that we ended up friends. We’d go shooting, we’d grab coffee, we’d roll our eyes at each other during shitty staff meetings. For the first time in probably my whole life, it felt easy to be around somebody who I also kind of wanted to hook up with.” Jasper leans back against the bookcase and lightly thumps his head back against one of the shelves. It hurts, sure, but probably not as much as he deserves. “It worked for us.”

Mack’s quiet for a long, tense moment before he asks, “It changed?”

“Yeah.”

“Because you slept together?” Jasper jerks away from the bookshelves at that, halfway convicted that the question’s just scalded him, but Mack only shrugs. “I ask ‘cause I’ve been there. Friends one second, in bed together the next, and not exactly sure how you got there—or what exactly you wanna do about it.”

He punctuates the last sentence with a sip from his mug, and for a few seconds, it lingers in the space between them. The Maria-shaped elephant in the room, Jasper thinks to himself, and he finishes his beer in one quick swig. Downstairs, Michael Bublé starts crooning about winter wonderlands while somebody else—maybe Hunter—shouts about the song “ruining Hartley’s lesbian street cred.” Jasper almost grins before he realizes that, surprise of all surprises, Mack’s back to staring him down.

He sighs and leans against the bookcase again. “I wanted to be friends with her,” he admits, and he rolls his eyes when Mack tilts his head at that. “What? I wasted a lot of time nursing a crush that never even left the ground. And sure, right now, I want a lot more than no-strings sex. But when we first, you know—”

“Hooked up?” Mack suggests.

Jasper nods slightly. “When that happened,” he continues, “I was really just looking to be her friend. No big ‘couple’s coming out’ bullshit. No catches. Just friends.” He thumps his head against the same shelf as before and closes his eyes. “I mean, fuck, I helped her write the ground rules.”

He swears he _feels_ Mack’s slightly disapproving frown. “Ground rules?”

For some screwy fucking reason he can’t name, Jasper actually laughs at that. Laughs and shakes his head, convinced for a moment that either his insecurity or his helplessness will just climb up out of his gut and eat him alive. “What kind of rules do you think we came up with?” he asks. “No sleepovers. No weeknight booty calls. No long talks afterward. No telling our mutual friends, no going to events as a unit, no date-like outings unless we split the bill.” He scrubs a hand over his face for a second. “And most important of all, no feelings.”

The stereo’s soulful crooning cuts off suddenly, and within a second or two, “Winter Wonderland” switches over to a playful, peppy version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The man’s promises of delicious-looking lips carry easily up the stairs, and Jasper sighs a little. “She texted me the list after we wrote it,” he explains. “An iPhone note commemorating our dedication to sex and nothing else.”

“And how many rules’d you break?” Mack asks.

“As of about six this morning? Every one.” The guy gapes some at that, genuine surprise flickering across his features like the world’s dullest strobe light, but Jasper just tosses up his hands. “We went away for a weekend to this cabin—she’d won it in a raffle, it’s a stupid story—and ever since that happened, everything’s felt sharper. Like we’re balancing on the edge of some razor I can’t even fucking see, which bothered me all the way up ‘til she pinned me to every wall in my house last night _and_ stuck around until the morning.” He rubs a hand over his face—his stubble, technically, because someone tall and gorgeous had districted him into staying in bed for an extra hour that morning—and finally glances over to meet Mack’s steady gaze. “She stayed the night,” he says, his voice mostly a croak, “and like a moron, I figured it fucking mattered. Figured we’d finally reached the tipping point, right up until I asked her to this party and she shot me down.”

Over at the desk, Mack rolls his lips together as the girl on the stereo harmonizes with her pushy boyfriend. Jasper sways to it a little as his stomach twists itself into a complicated Boy Scout knot, and for a few seconds, he fights against the urge to beat his head into the nearest wall before drinking himself stupid.

The urge is surprisingly fucking strong.

“She walked away,” he finally says instead of subjecting himself to blunt force trauma, and he shrugs when Mack glances at him. “I invited her to hang out with my friends—to do something besides eating and screwing—and she looked at me like I’d grown to heads before she walked right out of the house.”

“Sounds to me like she’s scared.”

The murmur sounds weird from a guy as tall and broad as Mack, almost like it belongs to somebody half his sizes and about a third his weight, and for the first second or two, Jasper wonders whether he’s hallucinated the whole thing. Mack, on the other hand, just shrugs and swigs from his mug. “I don’t know your girl,” he says. “Hell, I barely know you, except for when Hunter and Isabelle drag me into your conversations at the Hub. But like my mom always says, it takes two to tango.” The corner of his mouth kicks up into a tiny, eye-brightening smile. “Don’t think she ever meant to apply that to ‘friends with benefits’ ground rules, but what she doesn’t know won’t get me stuck on dish-washing duty after Christmas dinner.”

Jasper snorts and shakes his head. “Sounds like you’re about to jump on the ‘tell her how you feel aloud and with words’ bandwagon,” he grumbles.

“Nah, see, _that_ part is up to you.” Jasper rolls his eyes at that, but Mack just flashes another huge grin and points his mug in Jasper’s direction. “Here’s the thing: if you overlook the year of superfoods and vegan cheese, all my exes are awesome. But the reason I can say that now, even though I’m definitely not with any of them anymore, is because I waited to take the plunge until I knew I could be friends with them. Until we built up something that was a lot more substantial than ‘you’re good-looking and I wouldn’t mind taking you home.’” He shrugs lightly. “From what you’re saying, you’ve already got that part all sorted out. Feelings and sleepovers are a piece of cake in comparison.”

He toasts himself a little before swigging from his mug again, and for a couple useless seconds, Jasper’s stuck staring at him. He tries studying the guy the way _he’d_ studied Jasper, full of brooding eyes and an unyielding jawline, but all he really sees is a guy in a plaid shirt drinking Bailey’s from an Athens coffee mug.

Still, Mack indulges him for the last chorus of the song downstairs before he raises his eyebrows. “I got something on my face?”

Jasper snorts, but for once, he almost smiles. “Just wondering how somebody who has all the relationship answers stays single.”

Mack grins. “Gotta have some imperfections, now don’t I?” he returns, and like it or not, Jasper bursts out laughing. 

 

==

 

Two hours later, Jasper pulls into his driveway to discover Maria sitting on his front porch.

For the first time in about a week, the bitter December cold’s grabbed its obnoxious life-partner the biting December wind and fucked off to annoy somebody else, and huge, optimistic snowflakes flutter down from the cloud cover above. They stick to everything—Jasper’s windshield, his scarf, his shoulders, his _head_ —before melting quickly into icy slush, and he’s forced to dry his glasses on the inside of his sleeve before he’s even halfway up his front walk.

Maria’s hair hangs around her shoulders in loose, damp waves as she peers over at him from the little wooden bench that sits under his front window. He thinks for a second she might stand up and greet him—might apologize, might explain, might fill the silence with _something_ other than the strangely rhythmic patter of heavy snowflakes against the roof—but instead, she tucks herself smaller and shoves her hands under her thighs.

He rolls his lips together as he climbs the steps and, slowly, slides onto the bench next to her. “Cold?” he asks.

Her little huff of laughter rises up as fog around them. “You didn’t mention your party went until midnight.”

“To be fair, you didn’t ask.”

He keeps his voice as light and carefree as possible, almost like he’s ribbing her, but he knows the second she looks away that he’s missed at least two-thirds of the mark. She shifts her weight around awkwardly, her eyes trained on her shoes, and Jasper spends way too long staring at the side of her face before he finally glances back out at his yard. The snow sticks to the grass longer than to the sidewalk or his car, dusting the depressing green-brown mess into something white and clean. 

He wonders how lovesick you need to be to start turning your front lawn into a fucking metaphor.

“I wanted to see you,” Maria says while he’s still pondering the poetic resonance of fresh-fallen snow on dead grass, and when he lifts his head, he finds out two seconds too late that she’s staring at him. Her expression’s soft, but it’s distant, too; the longer they watch one another, the more he wonders whether the answers to life’s biggest questions are hidden in his forehead creases. She rolls her lips together before she drops her eyes back down to her lap, and for a second, she’s no longer Maria Hill.

Or rather, she’s not the Maria he knows, but an earlier version, a lost girl with messy hair and far-away eyes. 

“I leave for my dad’s tomorrow morning,” she explains after another couple beats, “and then I’m flying straight to Phil’s wedding. Since you’re not going, I figured I either say goodbye to you now, or I miss the chance entirely.” She shrugs slightly. “The second one didn’t really feel right.”

No matter how hard he tries—and trust him, he tries like his life depends on it—he can’t quite bring himself to focus on anything but the half-shadowed curve of her lips. “You coming back from Nebraska?” he asks.

She frowns as she glances back over at him. “What?”

“After the wedding. You coming back?”

Her frown deepens until she’s flat-out scowling. “Given that nobody in their right mind voluntarily stays in Nebraska for any longer than they have to, yes. Yes, I am coming back from the wedding.”

Jasper grins. “Then this hardly counts as a _goodbye_.”

Maria snorts half a laugh before she elbows him hard in the side, their bodies swaying together on the tiny bench. When he attempts to return the favor, she grabs his wrist, and they lose a couple seconds to wrestling like idiots. Their grins and grunts of effort help ward off the cold, and by time they settle down, Maria’s shoulder pressed hard against his and her hand practically in his lap, he’s almost totally forgotten about the slushy December snow.

She curls her cold fingers against his palm, and he wraps both of his hands around her one.

“Maria,” he says, “I need to tell you—”

“I think we should reevaluate,” she cuts him off. The rest of his sentence crumbles to sawdust in the back of his mouth (which hangs open like he’s some slack-jawed idiot, by the way), but Maria just purses her lips together. “After the New Year, when I’m home from Nebraska, I— I think we should talk. About a lot of things.”

He swallows. “You sure?” he asks. From what he can hear over the frantic hammering of his heart, his voice shakes.

She nods. “If that’s okay with you.”

“It is _definitely_ okay with me.” The reply bursts out of him, a freight train with no brakes that barrels right toward the point of no return, but he’s helpless to stop it. Really, he’s helpless to stop a lot of things: the way his heart races, the way he strokes her wrist with his thumb, the way he grins like a fucking idiot. She studies his face, her eyes still quiet and lost in a way he’s not really used to, and he squeezes her hand. “It’s good, Maria,” he promises. “It’s actually really good.”

They spend a few more seconds watching one another in the silence of the December night before, finally, she uncurls her fingers and links them in his. Her hand’s a lot smaller, a lot more delicate, and he can’t help rubbing it to help warm it up. She snorts at that, shaking her head, but she never hides her smile.

When he kisses her goodbye on his porch steps, she tastes like ice and wind. “Don’t do anything stupid in Nebraska,” he murmurs against her mouth, his fingers curled in her scarf.

“I make no promises,” she replies, and kisses him again.


	5. January

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In January, Maria learns a number of things about kumquats. Of course, the fact that she only learns about the kumquats because she’s sick as a dog is immaterial. As are Jane’s deductive reasoning skills and Phil’s meddling. No, what’s important is that noble fruit native to Asia, the kumquat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jane’s dress is based off one that Natalie Portman wore during a Miss Doir photo shoot last year. There's a good picture of it [here](http://www.wallpapershd1080p.com/wallpaper/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/28/7890/Natalie-Portman-Wallpapers-Natalie-Portman-actress-girl-dress-white-rose-grass.jpg). 
> 
> Thanks as always to my betas, Jen and saranoh. I feel you should know saranoh especially shouted at Maria a lot this chapter. (We can later discuss whether Maria deserves it.)

Maria throws up at work the first time on the Tuesday after New Year’s.

The nausea’s not new, but the vomit is, and she spends a long time hovering in the bathroom, slightly baffled. She’s reminded, in a way, of all the times her brothers’d dared her to eat some terrifying brown mud concoction they’d cooked up in the backyard: the second she throws up, her stomach settles. Afterward, she splashes water on her face, rinses out her mouth, and draws in one deep, fortifying breath before facing her reflection.

The dingy light in the women’s bathroom tints her skin this yellow parchment color, but aside from that, the woman in the mirror’s as bright-eyed and alert as the one in Maria’s bathroom at home, although her lipstick’s missing and her mascara’s a little runny. She wipes away her raccoon eyes and readjusts her bun before stalking back out into the hallway like she owns the district attorney’s office.

She survives exactly three hours of her work day before she throws up a second time.

This time, she’s meeting with Detective Howlett about a pending robbery investigation when the nausea spikes, and she loses track of a few seconds of the conversation to press a hand to her roiling stomach. Her insides twist and contort until she feels acid and bile tickling at the back of her throat. She excuses herself in a rush, walks swiftly down the hall, and barely manages to lock the bathroom door behind her before she’s heaving again. When she finally picks herself up and dusts off her knees, her mascara’s officially ruined and the pale, drawn face in the mirror belongs to a stranger. 

“Shit,” she mutters, and rests her temple against the wall.

When she throws up the third time, it’s in her office trash can while the door’s open, far from her proudest moment. She rests her forehead against the edge of her desk for a few seconds before she straightens up, and when she does, she discovers that Phil’s staring at her.

She grabs a handful of tissues out of the box and wipes her mouth. “It’s not what it looks like,” she calls to him from across the hall.

“You mean you _don’t_ have the flu?” Phil asks as he rounds his desk. She glares at him, but he just holds up his hands. “I’m certainly no expert, but from here, it looks like you have the flu.”

She snorts at him. “It’s not the flu,” she promises. The smell that wafts up from the depths of the trash can curdles her stomach, and she kicks it until it’s all the way under her desk. “I’m just a little nauseous.”

“A little nauseous is Clint and Natasha after a lunch at El Mexicali,” he retorts. “ _This_ is the kind of thing that demands a fleece blanket and six hours of Netflix.”

He settles his shoulder against her doorjamb, his posture irritatingly comfortable, and she glares at him as she swivels her chair back toward her computer. “I don’t believe in sick days for a ten-second stomach bug.”

“And I don’t believe in the other chief assistant district attorney turning our office into a plague house.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Afraid Clint’s a whiny baby when he’s sick?”

“Afraid you’ll burn this place down in a feverish rage if you don’t go home to your couch.” Maria grits her teeth to keep from snapping at him, but when she glances over, she discovers that there’s concern written all over his face. She forces her attention back to the computer screen. “Go home, Maria. Take care of yourself for once. We’ll make sure nothing here explodes in our faces.”

“You remember I have two older brothers, right?” Her head and stomach both swim when she twists to glare at him, but she somehow manages to ignore them both. “Big, tough brothers who _also_ baby me and who, by the way, are both somehow _still_ younger than you.”

The corner of Phil’s mouth twitches up into a tiny grin. “If that’s the best you can come up with, you must really be sick,” he informs her, and laughs when she flings two pencils in his general direction. 

Unfortunately, Tuesday’s first hop, skip, and flying leap into vomit-laced misery stretches into the rest of the week _and_ the weekend. By Sunday, she’s spent more hours lying on the floor and hating the world than she’s spent actually accomplishing human tasks—a nice bonus to the nausea of the last couple weeks. Worse, the milk in her fridge’s started to sour, and a single whiff sends her heaving into her sink.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” she informs her ceiling.

The ceiling stays suspiciously silent. 

On Monday, she calls into work for the first time in almost two years. Fury allows her to ramble through her excuse (flu, just the flu, _very_ bad flu) before demanding, “You going to die?” 

She groans and presses her face into her pillow. “If I say no, do I have to come in?”

He snorts a laugh. “Because Coulson told me about how you’re turning this place into a regular vomitorium, no. I just wanna know whether I need to promote Rogers into your position.”

For the first time in about forty-eight hours, she actually smiles. “You know that’s not what ‘vomitorium’ means, right?” 

“You keep correcting me, I’ll promote Rogers anyway,” he threatens, and Maria laughs before hanging up the phone.

She drinks peppermint tea for breakfast, eats some toast with jam for lunch, and then drives out to the drug store to drop another twenty-five bucks on pregnancy tests. And because her life is clearly a mess, they all reveal little pink pluses within about two of the three required minutes.

She lines them up on her bathroom counter, a proud little plastic battalion of shame. Even now, a week-and-a-half after the test in her hotel room and a full _month_ after she’d shut her calendar, shoved it under a couple case files, and ignored its existence, she’s not sure how she feels about the whole pregnancy thing. Well, except for nauseous. And bloated. And unusually chesty.

The internet suggests that the baby—because even at somewhere between eleven and thirteen weeks, pregnancy sites refer to the shapeless parasite as a baby—is probably somewhere between the size of a kumquat and a lemon. She wastes a good fifteen minutes reading articles on kumquats (because who the hell really understands what a kumquat even is?) before she realizes that she’s a grown woman sitting on her bathroom floor in her pajamas, reading about obscure fruit and generally avoiding her life as a whole.

Something, she decides, _needs_ to be done.

Within an hour, she’s thrown out her shame soldiers, showered, dressed, and reemerged from her bathroom as Maria Hill, attorney-at-law and well-rounded human being.

She throws up the coffee she drinks as a reward, but that’s _completely_ not the point. 

It’s just after six in the evening when the doorbell interrupts her marathon of old _Monk_ episodes. The blast of cold air from outside sends her reeling, but not nearly as much as the horrifying odor of steamed broccoli. Peggy, however, just grins. “We didn’t want you to suffer alone,” she announces, “so we brought dinner, distractions, and a baby.”

“We?” Maria asks as Peggy shoves the bag into her grip. Peggy rolls her eyes. “And wait, what do you mean by a baby? I have the flu, you shouldn’t—”

“Thor’s helping Heimdall coach basketball tonight,” Jane says as she wanders in after Peggy. Astrid’s diaper bag dangles from one shoulder while a very bundled-up Astrid clings to the other. She flashes Maria a drool-laced smile from behind the hood of her tiny parka, and Maria fully blames pregnancy-related hormones for the way her chest tightens. Lucky for her, Jane misses all that as she untangles herself from the diaper bag. “I asked Loki to babysit, but he has plans with people from work.”

“And by ‘people from work,’ she means ‘someone he can pay for sex,’ because there’s no way Laufeyson has actual _friends_.” Even from behind her thick, plaid scarf, Darcy’s voice carries through the whole foyer. Maria closes her eyes to keep from groaning aloud. “What?” Darcy asks defensively, a sure sign that Jane’s glaring at her. “I know he’s almost your brother-in-law, but he’s _also_ the kind of loaded douchebag who’d pay for it. Not that I wouldn’t think about paying for it if I had the money.”

“You have a boyfriend,” Peggy reminds her.

“Yeah, but doesn’t everybody want to try it at least once?”

“No,” Maria and Jane inform her at the same time, and Darcy snorts at both of them. By the time Maria forces herself to face her friends, Astrid’s chewing on Darcy’s hair as Peggy carries all their coats (the baby’s included) into Maria’s spare room. “Are you the whole ‘nurse Maria back to health’ committee, or are there more?” she asks.

“Natasha and Pepper are on their way,” Peggy calls from halfway down the hallway. Maria rubs her temple. “They’re bringing soup. Darcy wanted Chinese food.”

Darcy shrugs. “I have needs.”

Jane sighs. “That doesn’t work in every context.”

“Maybe my contexts have needs, too.” Jane rolls her eyes at that, but Darcy ignores it to squint at Maria. She’s in court attire—collared shirt, dark slacks, subtle jewelry—and between her serious clothes and her dark eyeliner, Maria’s pulse doubles. It _triples_ when Darcy decides, “You don’t look that sick.”

Maria swallows and forces a smile. “I think the worst of it’s finally over, thankfully.”

Peggy wanders back from the spare room and props her shoulder against the nearest wall. “And just how did you spend your first sick day in over a year?”

Maria shrugs. “Grew kumquats, mostly,” she replies, and grins when they all scowl at her.

By the time Maria unearths paper plates and plastic silverware from the depths of her pantry (because after all, her dishes are all piled up in the sink as a reminder that her life’s spiraling slowly out of her control), Pepper and Natasha arrive with a giant vat of chicken noodle soup. “Natasha suggested tomato bisque and grilled cheese,” Pepper says as she empties her bags, “but that seemed like a bad idea after the flu.”

“I just wanted tomato bisque,” Natasha admits, and she winks when Maria laughs. 

The smell of all the food—beef with broccoli, pork fried rice, chicken lo mien, tempura vegetables with dipping sauce, and yes, the soup—almost drives Maria back into the waiting arms of her bathroom, so she quickly fills a bowl with hearty chicken noodle soup and flees to the living room. She sits with her face in her hands until the worst of the nausea clears before she finally tries a spoonful of the broth. It’s thin but flavorful, and for the first time in the last couple days, she imagines herself eating a whole meal without throwing up.

By the time the others wander in to join her, she’s standing up for seconds. 

“Seems like you’re on the mend,” Peggy comments once Maria’s on her second slice of crusty French bread. Astrid, an expert at both crawling across the room and the international grabby-handed baby symbol for _more_ , hoists herself up onto her feet in an attempt to grab the bread right out of Maria’s hand. There’s a half-second struggle where she almost topples over and Maria almost overturns her bowl in an attempt to grab her, and as a consequence, Maria ends up sharing her seat and her dinner with a chubby-cheeked blonde.

Astrid beams at her, and Maria ruffles her hair.

“Sorry, what?” she asks after she’s handed Astrid a mostly cooled noodle. 

Peggy rolls her eyes. “We bring you food, and you’re distracted by the baby.”

“You’re the one who said I needed a distraction,” Maria reminds her.

“From your week of fighting off the flu, not from us.” She frowns, her brow and jaw each tightening without her permission, but Peggy just waves her chopsticks. “We all knew you weren’t doing well at work this past week. Tony even started a betting pool.”

Pepper snorts a laugh. “As though that’s unusual,” she mutters.

Maria grins. “If it’s a day that ends in Y, Tony’s probably started a betting pool about _something_ ,” she points out, and Pepper raises her carton of fried rice in agreement. Maria almost asks for more details about the betting pool—Tony’s rarely satisfied unless there’s at least eighteen different parameters that all require an uneducated guess—but then, Astrid flops back against her with a happy little sigh. Maria smiles and hands her another piece of bread (this one dipped in the broth), and Astrid sucks on it idly while her big, blue eyes study Maria’s face.

Aside from her nose, she’s her father’s tiny, diapered doppelgänger. Maria strokes hair from her face and expertly ignores the way her chest starts to ache.

Over on the couch, Natasha smirks. “Amy’s going to be jealous,” she intones, reaching for her glass.

Darcy, who’d flopped down onto the floor to help feed the baby until that same baby’d defected into Maria’s lap, scowls. “Amy Almost-Stark, or somebody else?” she asks. Natasha raises her eyebrows, and Darcy huffs out a breath. “Okay, okay, you obviously meant Amy Almost-Stark, never mind.” She spears a chunk of deep-fried sweet potato, dips it in the sweet-and-sour sauce—and then, frowns all over again. “Wait, why would Amy Almost-Stark be jealous of Astrid?”

Pepper smiles. “She and Maria bonded at dinner the night after Phil and Clint’s wedding.”

“Which you would have known if you’d bothered leaving your hotel room,” Natasha chimes in.

Peggy hides a snicker behind her beer, but like a character in some kind sort of California Valley Girl movie, Darcy tosses her head and rolls her eyes. “If your boyfriend lived with a middle-aged aunt who kept tabs on him all day every day, you’d spend as much time as possible in your reduced-rate hotel room, too.” When Natasha and Pepper glance at one another, their brows furrowed, Darcy wrinkles her nose. “You know what I meant,” she grumbles, and their matched confusion morphs into equally matched grins.

In the other armchair, Jane shakes her head. “You remember you have an apartment, right? One without an aunt to keep tabs on anyone?”

Darcy snorts. “And _with_ a neighbor who likes to remind me about the cows who hand out free milk,” she retorts, and they all laugh. 

“Speaking of the Barton-Coulson wedding,” Peggy says a few minutes later, glancing up from her carton of lo mien, “have you seen your special friend since we came back from Nebraska?”

Maria freezes, her spoon halfway to her mouth as all of her friends pivot to stare at her. The back of her throat tightens a little—not from nausea, but from nerves. “Like I keep saying, I don’t have a special friend.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “And again,” she mutters with a shake of her head.

Darcy hums into her beef with broccoli. “Tell me about it.”

“Can we _not_ do this tonight?” Maria demands, dropping her spoon back into her bowl. It clatters, a perfect match for the sharp edge to her tone, and she shoves the ottoman that she’s been using as a table away from the chair. In her lap, Astrid’s happy baby babbling trails off into a whimper. Maria sighs. “Look, I know you enjoy playing this game, but I’m still not feeling like myself,” she says after a few seconds, and for the most part, she’s _not_ lying. “In a couple days, I’ll sit around and let you all speculate at my expense. But I just—”

Her voice catches, and she shakes her head.

“I just can’t do it. Not tonight.”

There’s a few long moments of silence before all five of her friends nod in a sort of staggered unison, and Maria smiles weakly as she settles back into her chair. Astrid flops down in her arms and releases a contended little baby sigh, her cheek pillowed on Maria’s arm as she stares out into the rest of the living room. Maria rocks her idly while they listen to the conversation—Jane’s regaling them with all the reasons she hates the movie _Gravity_ while Darcy eggs her on—and after long enough, the evening feels normal again.

Normal enough that Maria’s almost able to imagine that there _aren’t_ four positive pregnancy tests in her bathroom garbage can.

Almost.

Astrid starts fussing around the time Natasha, Peggy, and Pepper carry all the dishes and garbage into the kitchen. Jane apologizes before plucking her out of Maria’s lap—and then, she grimaces. “Something went _right_ through you,” she informs her daughter, and it’s only when Maria draws in a long breath through her nose that she realizes what Jane’s talking about.

“And that’s my cue,” Darcy says, and dashes for the kitchen.

Jane rolls her eyes. “I’ve never met somebody more afraid of diapers, and that includes Tony.” Maria grins as Jane settles Astrid onto her hip. “Do you mind if I take her in the spare room and change her? I’d do it here, but I’m not really in the mood to hear Darcy’s ten-point explanation about why baby poop is ‘the grossest poop on the planet.’”

Maria laughs. “I’ll grab your diaper bag for you and meet you there,” she offers. Jane frowns slightly, her lips rolling together, and Maria blinks at her. “What?”

Jane quickly shakes her head. “Nothing. I guess I’m just used to you being on Tony and Darcy’s side of the baby-diaper spectrum.”

“Oh, I’m not planning on helping,” Maria assures her lightly, and for some reason, that chases Jane’s frown away.

Her spare room’s one part home office, one part storage room, but there’s a comfortable old bed in the corner and a lot of bare space on the floor. Within a few seconds, Jane’s transformed the area rug into a changing station, and Maria can’t help but chuckle at her ruthless efficiency. “Do you approach physics the same way you approach work and diapers?” she jokes.

Jane grins. “Honestly, I wouldn’t approach diapers like this if it wasn’t for her awful attention span.” She tickles her daughter’s chubby thighs, and Astrid squeals. “At home, she’s fine, but if we’re out anywhere, she wants to see everything. I think she gets it from Thor.”

“Thor’s not the one who’s studying the universe.”

“No, but he is the one who once accidently spent three hundred dollars at Home Depot.” 

Maria shrugs. “When it comes to home improvement, that’s not actually a lot of money.” 

“He went in for nails.”

Laughing somehow loosens some of the tension that’s built up in Maria’s shoulders and chest, and Jane smiles to herself as she focuses on changing Astrid’s diaper. They spend a few long seconds like that before Maria leans forward on the edge of the bed. She rubs her hands against her thighs like she expects there’s sweat clinging to her palms. Lucky for her, Jane’s too distracted to notice.

“Let me ask you something, if you don’t mind,” she says after another beat. Jane glances over at her as she reaches for the wipes, and Maria feels her heart leap into her throat. “It’s— Well, it’s about you and Thor. And Astrid, actually.”

Astrid cranes her neck at the sound of her name and grins when Maria waves at her with two fingers. Jane, on the other hand, just purses her lips hesitantly. “Okay, I guess.”

“I just—” Maria starts, but the words feel sticky in the back of her throat. She swallows around them. “I know you and Thor didn’t really plan on having kids right away. If you overlook Stark and Bruce’s ridiculous courting period, it’s practically the office’s worst-kept secret.” Jane snorts at that, and Maria almost smiles. “I guess I’m just wondering if, after you found out, you ever considered _not_ —”

“No.” 

The confidence, the _certainty_ in Jane’s voice is so immediate and iron clad that it honestly catches Maria totally off-guard. By the time she’s finished blinking and staring, Astrid’s rolling onto her stomach in her fresh diaper, her face bright with a drool-soaked baby grin.

Jane shakes her head. “We never planned on going in this order,” she admits as she settles back onto her knees, “but we always knew we’d stay together long-term. Thor actually bought my engagement ring a couple months before I got pregnant, not that I’m supposed to know that.” Maria laughs a little, and Jane smiles softly. “It was all an accident,” she says quietly, “and it took a while to adjust. But I think sometimes, things happen in the wrong order for a reason. Even if it means getting married a month before your daughter turns one.”

Maria nods unevenly, her eyes drifting away from Jane and down at her own hands. She stares at them for a moment until Astrid’s suddenly using Maria’s jeans to drag herself to her feet. She teeters, grinning, and raises her arms for Maria to pick her up.

“You’re a cuddler,” Maria accuses, and Astrid beams at her. Once the little girl’s back in Maria’s lap and snuggling into her sweatshirt, she glances back at Jane. “It took a while?” she asks carefully. “To adjust, I mean.”

Jane smiles. “How could it _not_? We’d hardly talked about kids before I got pregnant. But after a while, I couldn’t imagine my life any other way.”

Their conversation falls into a lull after that, Maria cuddling Astrid against her chest while Jane cleans up the changing pad and wipes. When the diaper bag’s finally packed and Astrid’s odor-bomb shoved into a plastic grocery sack, though, Jane sits back on her haunches. She considers Maria with soft, careful eyes before she says, “Ginger.”

Maria’s heart leaps into her throat. “Excuse me?”

“For the worst of the nausea. I drank Gatorade after I threw up, but ginger’s really the only thing that helped me keep food down when it got bad.” Jane shrugs. “In case you’re interested.”

For one long, painful moment, neither of them speaks, and the silence’s only broken by one happy sigh from Astrid. Jane’s expression is purposefully neutral—a skill she’s learned from working with so many lawyers, Maria suspects—but there’s a tiny hint of concern caught in her eyes.

Finally, Maria draws in a breath. “That’s how you got through your flu?” she asks carefully, all too aware that her voice is shaking slightly. “Ginger and Gatorade?”

The corner of Jane’s mouth kicks up into a smile. “Only way to do it,” she replies, and slings the diaper bag over her shoulder. 

 

==

 

Later, once the house is quiet and empty again, Maria sits on the edge of her bed and opens up her text messages. The conversation she’s looking for is at the very bottom of the screen, so far down that she’s required to scroll up a little just to open it.

The last message is from over a week ago, on January 1, and even though she’s memorized it, her stomach still clenches when she reads it.

**Him:** _happy new year! maybe I shouldn’t send this next part, but after our last conversation, I’m going to say it: I’d kiss you if you were here._

The time stamp’s exactly one minute and ten seconds after midnight, her first text message of the new year.

And for about the hundredth time since that 12:01:10 on New Year’s Day, Maria closes the conversation without responding. 

 

==

 

“I’m not really concerned about the outcome, since he’s going to jail either way, but I assigned Ward the motion response for the Rowley case.” Maria snorts, shaking her head, and Phil frowns at her. “What’s wrong with replying to the motion?”

“There’s nothing wrong with replying to the motion, if you overlook the intern who’s drafting it.” She reaches for the bowl of popcorn in the middle of the table, but he slides it out of her reach. She rolls her eyes. “Phil, I know you think he’s good in a pinch—”

“Because he’s proven himself several times,” he defends.

“—but Grant Ward is a disciplinary sanction waiting to happen.” He scowls at her, his face folding in like some sort of origami creature, but she ignores him to reach for her (warm and mostly flat) ginger ale. “And trust me when I say his appearance before the ethics board will have nothing to do with his past as a charming teenage felon, either.”

Phil pauses for a moment before he rubs his forehead with two fingers. “You’re never going to let either of us live that down, are you?”

“Given that your whole relationship is the stuff bad romance movies are made of, no,” she returns, and he finally relinquishes the popcorn. 

Phil and Clint’s kitchen table—and their countertops, their island, the TV trays _next_ to the table—looks a little like the judicial complex file room just vomited all over them, thanks mostly to Maria’s four canvas bags of case files and Phil’s actual portable hand truck of the same. Usually, they hunker down in the conference room back at the office for their monthly case audit, but Bucky, Sharon, and Darcy have spent the last ten days dedicating their lives to a trial that starts Monday, and Phil hadn’t had the heart to evict them for the weekend. So rather than cart files across the office to a secure room with no curious, paper-ripping cats named Sandy, Maria had lost most of her Friday afternoon to loading up reusable grocery bags with cases, motions, and legal pads before dragging them all to Phil’s house.

On the plus side, Phil’d honored her request for warm ginger ale, fresh-popped popcorn (in a pan on the stove, none of that microwave bullshit), and dinner from a local sandwich shop (where she could easily select bland ingredients without raising eyebrows).

On the _negative_ side—

“What about the Broderick case?” Phil asks, and Maria jerks her head up from her legal pad like the question’s scalded her. A quick glance at the excel spreadsheet on her laptop—a masterwork of color- and initial-coded case names and descriptions that Peggy maintains with a steel fist—reveals that the next three cases they’re slated to review are all hers and that the _first_ of the three is indeed _State v. Kevin Broderick_. 

She apparently spends a little too long staring at the name while she fights against the spike of nerves in her stomach, because Phil looks up from his own notes. “Sorry, is that one of the ones we’re skipping? I know you told me there’s a couple you haven’t worked on, I just thought—” 

“No, we can talk about Broderick.” She knows from the way his brow tightens that she’s answered too quickly, but she ignores it to drag the file in front of her and flip it over. “The good news is that all three victims are out of the hospital and back in their apartments as of a couple weeks ago. The third victim’s going to need some pretty intense physical therapy—she broke her hip crawling to the phone after the beating—but otherwise, they’re all in good shape.”

“Good enough to identify their attacker?” Phil asks.

Maria shakes her head. “And that’s where the bad news starts. All three of them failed a physical _and_ a photo lineup. Two actually picked Officer Guthrie as the attacker, so naturally, Heimdall’s having a field day with that.” Phil snorts half a laugh as he scribbles something down on his legal pad, and she shrugs. “Otherwise, I’m still trying to schedule a face-to-face with the alibi witness so I can judge her credibility.”

“What about the other witness?” 

Maria freezes, glass halfway to her lips. “Other witness?” she replies dumbly.

“Didn’t you have another potential witness you wanted Jasper to hunt down?” Phil reaches for his iPad and starts scrolling idly through the spreadsheet. “Here: Jason Davidson. Claimed to see Broderick at the retirement community but disappeared into the ether as soon as he was cleared as a suspect.” He hands her the tablet. “You marked down that you had Jasper looking for him back in November.”

She forces a tiny smile as she flicks through the spreadsheet and hopes against hope that her expression and eyes stay perfectly neutral. Of _course_ she remembers sending Jasper after Jason Davidson, just like she remembers all their subsequent conversations about the little shit: his avoidance tactics, his last known whereabouts, his legion of drug-addled friends willing to lie, cheat, and steal just to keep him out of trouble. There’s three paragraphs of notes on Jasper’s search in the front of the Broderick file, not to mention the dozen e-mails saved on her computer.

But since the wedding, she’s hardly thought about Jason Davidson, and she’s _definitely_ not spoken to Jasper about him. Or about anything else, for that matter.

She shrugs as she hands the tablet back to Phil. “I’ll try to touch base with Jasper about it on Monday.”

“I’m having a sit-down with him first thing to talk about serving subpoenas on that frat house, if you want to—”

“I’ll talk to him,” she says again, more sharply, and she avoids his concerned expression and constipated little lip-roll to flip the Broderick file shut. “Next one of mine’s Yancy, which was apparently a popular name for felons in 20—” 

Phil tosses his pen down on the table. “Okay, what’s going on with you?” he demands. Maria blinks at him in honest surprise (because Phil Coulson is generally the king of quiet subtlety, not tight-jawed commands), but he just crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re grumpy and cagey all the way through the wedding, sick as a dog the second we’re back, and now? You’re dropping the ball on an important case.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not dropping the ball to forget—”

“Except I watched your face the whole time you looked at that spreadsheet, and trust me: you didn’t forget.” There’s no room for error in his tone, no shadow of a doubt for her to poke her fingers into, and her heart immediately plummets into her stomach. Worse, her neutral expression from a minute ago completely crumbles. She purses her lips and drops her eyes to the tabletop, and across from her, Phil sighs. “I don’t think anybody else’s noticed that something’s wrong,” he says after a beat. “Hell, I wasn’t even _sure_ about it until you came back from your sick day. But if there’s something going on that I can help with—”

She snorts half a laugh. “Look, Phil, this is _nothing_ you can help with.”

“You have no way of knowing that.” She grits her teeth to keep from rolling her eyes, but Phil just shakes his head. “I know you think the best choice is pushing people away—”

Her chest tightens involuntarily. “That is _not_ my intention.”

“—but after all this time we’ve worked together, I’d hope you’d at least trust me enough to—”

“I’m pregnant, okay?” The words burst out of her, three individual bombs that explode into the middle of his stupid monologue and leave the kitchen completely silent in their wake. His eyes widen in surprise, his mouth hangs open, and Maria— 

Maria swallows thickly and tries to ignore the sound of her own voice ringing in her ears. “I’m pregnant,” she says again, softer than before. “I realized at the end of November that I’d missed my period, and I confirmed it when we were in Nebraska.” Her breath shakes as she finally meets his eyes. “That’s why I’ve been off, and why I was a pill at your wedding.”

A long, tense, and all-around uncomfortable silence sweeps across the room, and for the first time all night, Maria wishes Barton’d stayed home with them instead of driving over to his brother’s for some sort of bizarre family bonding ritual. Eventually, Phil closes his still-gaping mouth, but it’s still another five minutes (or lifetimes) before he wets his lips again.

“You’re pregnant,” he finally repeats.

She nods. “First time I’ve said it aloud, but yeah.”

“You’re definitely pregnant,” he says again. She cocks her head at him, her eyebrows raised, and he shakes his head. “Sorry, I’d just prepared myself for a different conversation.”

Maria scowls at him. “You’d planned to corner me in your kitchen and ask me nosy personal questions?”

“Less ‘planned’ and more ‘hoped,’ but basically.” Something about his tiny, crooked smile loosens the ball of nerves that’s settled in her stomach, and she actually smiles back at him for a half-second as she shakes her head. “Do I get to know who the father is?”

She rolls her eyes. “Does that actually matter?”

“Not really, no,” he admits, and she nods a little at that. Except the longer they study one another—or more accurately, the longer Phil studies her while she tries not to fidget under the heat of his gaze—the more his brow tightens and his eyes narrow. “Have you told him?” he asks after a few more seconds.

She frowns. “Told who?”

“The father.”

For the first time since the start of the conversation—for the first time since Phil called her out for her weird attitude at his wedding, in all honesty—Maria throws up her hands. “Does that even matter?” she demands, and she hears as much as feels the frustration that bubbles up from the pit of her stomach. “God, do you really think that’s how this works? That the woman’s first impulse is to run to the guy who put the bun in her oven and spill the beans?” She tips her head back just enough to stare at the ceiling. “There’s a parasite I never planned on growing in my gut and making me nauseous for the better part of every morning, and you’re worrying about whether somebody _else_ knows about it.”

Phil sighs. “That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s what you implied.”

“But you _know_ that’s not what I meant.” 

She tries to roll her eyes, to brush off the actual sincerity that creeps into his tone, but when she finally forces herself to glance across the table at him, all his features are soft and kind. In that moment, he’s not her frustrating, nosy friend with the annoying cat and the muscular husband, but her mentor Phil Coulson, the man who helped train her during her first weeks and months at the office. The man who asked her to stand up with him in his wedding, she thinks, and who’s never once let her flounder.

She wets her lips. “Phil—”

“You shouldn’t be going through this on your own,” he says gently, and she huffs out a breath at him. “You’re one of the strongest people I know, and for reasons I can never quite figure out, you like to pretend that you don’t need help. But this isn’t the kind of thing you do completely on your own. Not when you care about the person on the other end of the relationship.”

“How do you know I didn’t just have a one-night stand?” she asks, and rolls her eyes when Phil’s only response is the world’s least subtle eyebrow-raise. “Fine, okay, it wasn’t just a one-night stand. But even knowing that, how do you know I’m planning to actually have this baby? Or that, one-night stand or not, I’d want the father to be part of all this?”

“Because I know _you_.”

The smile that blooms over Phil’s face is so warm and loving that Maria’s breath catches in her throat. Uninvited, hot tears—tears that she’s fought against since that frigid Nebraska morning almost a month ago—prickle against her eyelids and turn her breath shaky, and she ducks her head to hide them from Phil. He obviously notices, though, because he reaches across the table to squeeze her arm. 

“There’s no way that you’d spend four or five months sleeping with somebody who wouldn’t want to be part of your lives,” he says gently, and she can’t stop herself from wrapping her hand around his. “And there’s no way that a man who’d stick around like that—who’d voluntarily hide from your friends while also buying you deep-fried artichokes at overpriced restaurants—would abandon you now. At least, _I_ wouldn’t.”

A couple tears escape when she finally raises her head, but she decides against wiping them away. “Should I be worried you’re about to leave Barton for me and my parasite?” 

He grins. “Maybe if you stop skipping arm day at the gym,” he retorts, and laughs when she smacks him lightly. His thumb traces gentle patterns on her wrist, ones that remind her of how Jasper’d stroked her hip when they’d slept together in the cabin, and she swallows around her urge to _really_ cry. “Talk to him,” Phil says again. “Or if not to him, to the rest of us. To your _friends_.”

Maria sighs and shakes her head. “You make it sound so easy.”

“Only because I know you can handle anything life throws at you,” Phil replies, and squeezes her arm again.

 

==

 

Darcy groans and, with all the grace and dignity of a sideshow circus performer, balances her plastic wine glass on her forehead. “Please kill me.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “We’ve been here ten minutes, and all you’ve done is drink free wine.”

“Because that’s the only way to keep me from losing my mind,” Darcy returns. Maria snorts at her, but she wrinkles her nose. “Seriously. Kill me and bury me under all the plastic wine glasses from the last two months. Or build me a mausoleum out of them. I’ve probably drank enough.”

“She’s not wrong!” Jane calls from behind the closed dressing room door.

Darcy, maturely, flips the door off.

The tiny wedding boutique where Jane’d bought her wedding dress reminds Maria of one of those romantic comedies where all the main characters hail from a small town on the eastern seaboard. There’s white-washed wood paneling on all the walls, plush carpeting on the floor, and big bay windows that fill the shop with bright, cheery winter sunshine. The silver light fixtures and silver dress racks gleam like the shop assistants just finished polishing them, and all around the room, perfectly poised mannequins advertise the very latest in wedding fashion. There’s not a pleat or sequin out of place, and Maria—

Well, Maria’d changed her shirt three times because everything’d felt just a tad too snug.

She stirs her ice water (with lime) with her plastic swizzle stick and keeps that thought to herself.

Next to her, Darcy sinks lower on the white couch with the baby blue pillows. The shop assistant who’s not pinning and tucking Jane’s dress glares at her, and she retaliates by kicking her feet up on the coffee table. 

Maria sighs. “If you get us kicked out before Jane’s done—”

“I’ve been here for three fittings and will be here for two more,” Darcy replies with a wave of her hand. “I’m the only person other than Mama Odinson who’s set eyes on this dress, and trust me, nobody in the _world_ wants to separate Jane from the one person who’ll be honest with her.” She finally removes her wine glass from her head so she can take a swig. “We’re golden.”

“And if I don’t want to be guilty by association?” Maria returns.

“Hey, nobody forced you to come.” She shrugs a little at that, her eyes dropping back to her water glass, but Darcy suddenly snaps to attention and sits up. “Nobody,” she repeats, “forced you to come.”

Maria frowns. “You already said that.”

Darcy waves a hand. “It’s dramatic. Emphasizes the fact that you don’t need to be here, but you came anyway.”

“Because Jane invited me.”

“Jane’s invited you before, and you’ve always dodged the bullet.” Maria rolls her eyes again, hoping against hope that she looks at least a _little_ dismissive. Darcy, as undeterred as on any other day, just leans into her personal space. “You and Peggy always avoid this. Or schedule manicures. Or log shooting range time.”

Maria sighs. “Like I keep telling you, it’s hard to get range time on—”

“Weekends and holidays, yeah, we’ve all heard that before.” Maria purses her lips, but Darcy keeps squinting at her. “You’re not at the range today, though. Or washing your hair. You’re here, with us, for Jane’s dress fitting.”

“And you think it’s suspicious?” Maria asks. Her voice’s a little tighter than usual, and she swallows around the lump in the back of her throat.

“It’s kind of the definition of suspicious,” Darcy replies, and she holds Maria’s eyes as she drains the rest of her wine.

Maria huffs out a breath, ready for the inevitable argument—because if there’s one thing Darcy Lewis loves more than tormenting Grant Ward and commenting on the tightness of Barton’s slacks, it’s arguing—but lucky for her, the dressing room doors suddenly swing open. The shop assistant steps out first, her black sweater dress and tights almost painfully dark in the bright white room, but she’s immediately dwarfed by the _vision_ that is Jane Foster in her wedding gown. The dress is white, strapless, and simply cut, but it’s the detailing that transforms it (and Jane) into a knockout. Because simple as it is, the dress is covered in tiny scallops of fabric that from where Maria’s sitting look like they could be flower petals or the distant twinkle of far off stars. Most of the scallops are white, but others are gold or blue or blush, and the whole effect—

Maria’s just a little floored by the whole effect. She might even stare.

Darcy wolf-whistles, which earns another glare from the shop assistant, and Jane blushes all the way down to her collarbone. “You really need to stop doing that.”

“Stop reminding everybody that my bestie’s a bombshell who’s going to make her man forget his wedding vows? Thanks, but no thanks.” Jane screws up her face a little at that, but she’s smiling, too. “Do a twirl for Maria, since she’s here to distract herself from whatever’s bugging her.”

Maria twists to glare at her. “I’m not—”

“Leave Maria alone,” Jane instructs, her voice a little harder than before.

“Then do a twirl.”

She sighs at that, shaking her head slightly, but she obeys anyway. Maria can’t help but smile at the gentle sweep of the dress and the way that Jane—a woman who prefers jeans and oversized flannel shirts to anything that requires tights or heels—lights up wearing it. Suddenly, the old adage about brides glowing on their wedding day makes a _lot_ more sense.

Jane waits for the dress to settle before she asks, “What do you think?”

Maria smirks. “I think Thor’s going to need cue cards,” she replies, and Jane bursts out laughing.

The shop assistant walks Jane through the adjustments to the dress—tucking this seam, loosening that one—while Darcy wanders over to the minibar and refills her plastic glass. “We should force Maria into a couple of these dresses,” she suggests, and Maria immediately scowls at her. “What? The first fitting after she bought it was like a lesson in boredom, so they let me try on a couple different wedding dresses. Helped kill the time.”

“I’m not actually bored,” Maria points out.

“And if you’re bored,” Jane interjects, “you could try on your bridesmaid’s dress.” Darcy heaves a sigh at that, but when Jane attempts to glance in her direction, the shop attendant steers her face back toward the three-sided mirror. She rolls her eyes in triplicate, and Maria snorts a laugh. “You’ve only really tried it on once since you bought it.”

“Yeah, because horrible things happen when we try to shove the girls in there without the proper supportive underthings.” Maria almost chokes on a mouthful of water, but Jane works very hard to hide her grin. “I almost popped a seam. Not really in the mood to try that again.”

Jane shakes her head. “I wish I had your problems.”

“No kidding,” Maria agrees.

“Yeah, okay, that from _you_.” Maria frowns as Darcy flops back onto the couch with just enough momentum that her whole body _bounces_. One of the shop assistants actually smirks at that, but Darcy ignores her to gesture toward Maria’s chest. “You’re looking extra ‘talented’ lately.”

Maria shrugs and tries very hard to ignore the tight feeling in the back of her throat. “I bought a new bra,” she lies.

“Well, it’s working for you,” Darcy says appreciatively and, thankfully, returns to drinking her free wine. 

Eventually, the shop assistant stops fluttering around Jane like an agitated butterfly and leads her back into the dressing room with a promise to “reevaluate the undergarment situation,” whatever that actually means. As soon as the door closes behind them, Darcy groans and rolls her head back against the couch cushions. “At this point, the only reason I’m putting up with this wedding is because I get another weekend of awesome life-affirming unmarried sex.” 

Maria snorts into her water. “The only reason?”

“ _Definitely_ the only reason. Seriously. I won’t even complain about Barton’s wedding anymore, because those were the best two nights of my life so far.”

She waggles her eyebrows suggestively, and Maria rolls her eyes. “Is that a comment on your relationship with Peter or just on your previous boyfriends?”

Darcy shrugs. “Probably some from column A and the rest from column B.” Maria chuckles a little, shaking her head, but Darcy just wriggles around until she’s propped up in the corner of the couch like some sort of Greek goddess. Worse, she stares at Maria like she wants to peel off her skin with sheer force of will.

Maria focuses on drinking her water and absolutely nothing else.

“What about you?” Darcy finally asks. “You bringing your F-W-B to the big event?”

Maria blinks at her. “My what?”

“Your friend-with-benefits.”

The casual way Darcy explains the term, complete with further Grecian slouching and a swig out of her plastic wine glass, catches Maria off guard, and for a split second, they just stare at each other. The answer to her original question, of course, is that Maria has no idea whether she and Jasper will go to the wedding together, or even whether Jasper is going at all, because they’re still not speaking. At this point, it’s almost a game: who’ll dodge left first in the hallway? Who’ll stare into their coffee cup until their eyes hurt during a staff meeting? Who’ll start the passive-aggressive e-mail chain about upcoming cases where both Fury and Phil are copied in on the discussion? Who’ll start drinking water out of the tap to avoid an awkward meeting at the water cooler?

Maria knows she needs to say _something_ , to explain her silence before she literally implodes, fruit-sized parasite and all. 

Right now, though, she raises her eyebrows at Darcy. “You’re not calling him my boyfriend like everybody else?” she asks, another expert dodge.

Darcy snorts. “Are you kidding? You’re better than that. You’ve ascended to some kind of higher plane where you don’t need a boyfriend, just work, beer, and sex.” She pauses to purse her lips. “Maybe not in that order.”

Maria almost smiles. “You sound jealous.”

“Maybe I kind of am.” Maria’s brow crinkles, mostly in surprise, and Darcy shrugs as she stares down at her glass. “Don’t get me wrong,” she explains, “because Peter’s great. Maybe even the greatest—not that I want him to know that. It’s just that sometimes, I wish I could stop all the emotions from happening.” She shakes her head. “Relationships are full of sticky, confusing stuff, and that makes them kind of suck. I really only like the companionship part. Well, that, and the really great sex.”

She punctuates the sentence by helping herself to a big gulp of wine, but Maria frowns. The deepest part of her stomach dips and swims, and for the first time in a couple weeks, it’s not because of the nausea. She thinks of dinners at stupid gastropubs and the weekend at the cabin before she realizes Darcy’s staring at her again.

She forces herself to roll her eyes. “You’re not actually serious,” she accuses tightly.

“Uh, are _you_ jealous?” Darcy retorts. “Because with the long pause and the weird look on your face, I kind of think you might be jealous.”

Maria cocks her head to one side. If her heart is climbing slowly up her throat, well, at least there’s no way for Darcy to tell.

They stare at each other for a long time before Darcy finally sighs. “No, that’s probably just how people on the higher plane talk, so never mind,” she decides, and Maria smiles as she sips her water.

 

==

 

Late that night—later than she’s proud of—Maria stands in the bathroom and studies herself in the mirror. Without her makeup, her face looks as pale and exhausted as she feels most days; in a camisole and her pajama pants, there’s a clear swell to her chest and maybe even to her waistline. She twists and turns in the bright white light of the bathroom, lifting her shirt and rolling her waistband out of the way to study whether her brain’s playing tricks on her.

She’s still not sure.

She feels bloated and a little unlike herself, but she’s still not sure.

Either way, she swaps the camisole out for a sweatshirt before she crawls into bed.

But lying in the darkness, her house still and quiet, she can’t help thinking about all of Darcy’s nosy comments at the bridal shop or the half-dozen conversations later, when they met Thor and Astrid for lunch. And she can’t help but remember the way Thor’d touched Jane’s shoulder to get her attention or the way he’d beamed at their little daughter.

They were stupid, day-to-day moments that Jane and Thor probably never stopped to analyze.

For some reason, they hurt Maria’s heart.

Finally, just after midnight, she grabs her phone off the bedside table and scrolls all the way down in the text message stream until she finds Jasper’s name. His last message is still his New Year’s greeting from over three weeks ago.

She stares at it a long time before opening a new message.

**Me:** _We need to talk._

She’s barely set her phone down when the return message chimes through.

**Him:** _I thought you’d never ask_

 

==

 

Jasper walks into Maria’s office first thing Monday morning. 

He’s dressed in his usual work attire, a suit without the jacket, and carries with him the scent of the crisp late-January morning. He’s such a sight for sore eyes, smiling with a paper coffee cup in his hand, that Maria completely loses track of her conversation with Steve. Instead, she smiles back at Jasper even as her heart clenches hard in her chest.

From where he’s bending over a half-finished motion response, Steve frowns. “If you need Jasper,” he says apologetically, “I can—”

“Trust me: as popular as I am, I am _not_ in a hurry this morning,” Jasper replies, and Maria bites down on the corners of her grin as she returns to helping Steve with Laufeyson’s latest round of crazy.

Thanks to the late night text and the lazy back-and-forth conversation that’d stretched out through most of Sunday, the bolus of dread and misery in Maria’s stomach has finally and miraculously vanished. By the time she’d climbed into bed on Sunday night armed with her Kindle and a cup of peppermint tea (a new addiction after the whole parasite-induced nausea thing), she’d actually felt like the master of her own fate for the first time all month. She’d imagined a calm, rational conversation with Jasper over coffee, where they’d talk about their whatever-they-had, and this accident, and the future. She’d finally be able to tuck the last few weeks of indecision, misery, ginger, and vomit far, far behind her.

Then, she’d used her Kindle’s internet browser to read about how, by now, her parasite’s developed fingerprints and, if it’s a girl, tiny ovaries with tinier eggs.

She’d laid awake for a long time, after that.

Still, she’d woken up with no signs of nausea and an actual spring in her step, and she’d only changed pants twice before deciding she looked good enough for human consumption. A good start to a Monday.

And now, Jasper’s smiling at her.

He’s leaning against the wall by the door as she and Steve finish reorganizing his arguments in to some semblance of sense, and no matter how hard she tries, Maria can’t keep her eyes off him. He smirks at her over the rim of his coffee cup, his eyebrows raised expectantly; when she rolls her eyes, he chuckles like he’s keeping the world’s best secret. Steve, too observant for his own good, glances between them a few times, but he’s subtle enough to purse his lips and otherwise keep his mouth shut.

Maria’s always liked Steve Rogers. 

When they’re finished, he flips his case file shut with just the right amount of _I feel like I’m delaying something important_ urgency. “Thanks,” he says quickly.

She waves a hand. “Any time. And hey, if you need a second set of eyes before you file it—”

“I’ll let you know,” he promises. He flashes Jasper a half-second smile before he slides out of the office and, wisely, closes the door behind him. 

Jasper grins. “I can’t tell if he thinks I’m going to screw you or eat you.”

“You have been known to do both,” Maria replies. He laughs at that, his voice filling her office, and she tries very hard not to grin right back at him. Her nerves start to stir a little, a tiny buzz under her skin, but she ignores it to rest her hands on her hips. “I thought you said you needed to pick up a couple of Thor’s witnesses this morning. Couldn’t possibly stop by to say hi.”

“Turns out you don’t have to go nab teenage witnesses when the defense attorney comes down with the flu,” he replies with a shrug. “Which is good, because when I told my buddy Hartley I might need her to sit in the passenger’s seat and look menacing, she threatened to castrate me with her mind.” 

Maria laughs. “Well, we can’t have that.”

“I don’t know. My mom always said I was the best soprano in the Saint Ignatius children’s choir.” His voice is light and easy as he pushes away from the door, but there’s an edge in the way he holds himself and how he worries the coffee cup between his hands. He takes a few steps forward, almost like he plans to walk all the way to her, but stops at the corner of her desk. 

She rolls her lips together. 

“I know this is probably not the time, because you kind of made the whole ‘we need to talk’ thing sound like a big deal,” he says after a couple seconds, his eyes dropping down to his cup. “But I thought since my schedule’s clear until eleven and yours is pretty empty all day, we could run down to the cafeteria. Grab a cup of coffee.” He steals a quick glance at her, and her breath catches in her chest. “Try to at least start talking.”

There’s something in his voice that feels like an implication—like _suspicion_ , more than anything else—and suddenly, all of Maria’s good humor sweeps out of her like the receding tide. Her steadying breath shakes a little, and when she tries to smile, it feels more like an involuntary twitch than anything else. “I know I owe you an explanation,” she finally manages, “but it’s not really something I want to talk about—”

“Here?” Jasper guesses. “Because as much as I want to respect that, I also think three-plus weeks of radio silence deserves a little more than the casual workplace brush off.”

She draws in another, even shakier breath. “Jasper—”

“Can you just tell me what the fuck I did?” he cuts in, and she jerks back so hard, she swears she’s been punched in the gut. There’s hurt in his voice, the kind of raw, rough hurt she’s never heard from him before, and for some reason, that cuts her deeper than anything that’s happened since Phil’s wedding. “You said you wanted to reevaluate. That once the dust cleared from the holidays, we’d talk about it, and like a dumbass, I believed you.” He huffs out a rough breath. “I believed you, and so even after you ignored my text, I tried to be a good guy. Figured you needed time to think, to process what you said to me before you left for your dad’s and that I shouldn’t get in your way. But when one week turned into two and then three?” He shakes his head. “Well, that’s says a lot, now doesn’t it?”

Somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind—behind all of the armor she’s forged over the years, behind all of her confidence and her determination and her general pigheadedness— Somewhere, in the darkest part of her _self_ , something shatters. It breaks, like glass against granite, and she tips her head up toward the ceiling as her eyes start to sting. She deserves this, she thinks, Jasper’s unbridled anger, but at the same time—

At the same time, she somehow expected a totally different reaction.

She swallows hard around the lump in her throat. “Listen, I—” 

“I thought we were maybe going to land back on the same page, you know?” he presses, and every word feels like a tiny dagger to her chest. “Like maybe I wasn’t the only one who started to look at the sex as something more than the sex. But instead, I’m a patsy, an easy booty call for when you’re bored or a tiny bit lonely.”

Damp clings to her eyelashes, and she raises her fingers to brush it away. “That’s not what I want to talk about, Jasper, and if you’d just let me—”

“I’m a sucker, aren’t I?” 

This time, his voice is softer, almost shakier. Maria wipes her face again before she glances over at him, and she’s somehow both surprised and not to find that he’s staring at the floor, his lips pursed into a tight line. She remembers an expression like that from the cabin, when he’d suggested they date without ever using the word—and again, on his porch, his eyes distant as they’d watched the snow fall around them. She’d driven around the block after they’d finished talking that night only to park in front of his house again, desperate to drum up the courage ring his doorbell. To tell him, point-blank, that she was almost two months late and that she thought she knew why.

Instead, she’d waited until the snow blanketed her windshield before she’d finally given up and driven home.

Now, a month later, she feels like a fucking fool.

“I’m a sucker,” Jasper says again, almost whispering, and she jerks out of her meandering memories just in time to watch him shake his head. “To think that you’d come back from Nebraska and say you’d figured out you wanted to give this a try, when really—”

“I’m pregnant.”

For the second time this month—the second time in her life, really—she blurts the words like they’re a grenade she’s desperate to throw away, and across from her, Jasper freezes. He freezes and stares at her, his eyes widening, and Maria only realizes that she’s shaking when she sucks in her next breath. Her whole body trembles like a leaf, a nice counterpart to her wet eyes. She can’t figure out when exactly she started crying. 

She wants to blame it on her hormones, but she knows it’s more because of the gaping _hurt_ welling up in the middle of her chest and the way Jasper’s voice keeps ringing in her ears.

“I know we weren’t on the same page,” she hears herself say, her voice so distant that it’s almost an out-of-body experience. “That’s why I said what I said, why I came to see you that night, why I—” The words crack in the back of her throat, and she swallows hard around them. “But then I went to Nebraska and took the test, and suspecting and knowing were suddenly so _different_ that I just— I couldn’t—” 

This time, instead of just breaking, the words morph into a sound that’s just the wrong side of a helpless little sob, and she plasters her hand over her mouth. She tries to stare at the floor, to compose herself enough that she can string a coherent thought together, but nothing really helps. All of her careful plans from the night before spill out in front of her like scattered puzzle pieces or loose change, and she closes her eyes before the carpet blurs even more in her vision. She can’t decide whether she’s embarrassed, or ashamed, or angry—and worse, if it’s the last one, she can’t decide who to be angry _at_.

Instead, every emotion from the last three weeks—the last two months, really—jumble into a ball she can’t unravel, and she’s stuck crying in her office in front of the one person in the world who’s allowed to be annoyed by it.

She’s about to tell him that, too—that it’s okay, he can walk away, she understands—when Jasper’s hand suddenly touches her hip. It’s warm and broad, so familiar that she almost breaks into another dozen pieces, and it’s all she can do to not jerk away from him.

“Come here,” he murmurs, so low and gentle that it’s barely a rumble in his chest. When Maria raises her head, tears still hot against her cheeks, he offers her a tiny smile. “You don’t really think I can just stand here and watch you cry ten seconds after you told me you’re pregnant, right?” he asks. “Because if you actually think that about me, then there’s a whole other conversation that—”

“Please shut up,” she interrupts, and she avoids watching his reaction by immediately folding herself into his grip. He wraps her up tight, as tight as he’d held her when she’d spent the night at his house in December (another failed attempt to talk to him about the possible unintended consequences of greedy bathroom sex), and she can’t help tucking her face into his neck. He smells like his cologne and coffee, a safe, familiar scent that she wants to roll around in. 

She thinks Jasper knows that, too, because he tips his head out of the way and lets her breathe him in.

“We’ll figure this out, okay?” he whispers, his breath warm against her ear. “I don’t know what happens next—hell, I don’t even know what happens when I let go of you in five minutes—but we’ll figure this whole thing out.”

For the first time since he’d snapped at her, Maria almost chuckles. “Is this the part where I suggest you just don’t let go after the five minutes?” she asks.

Whether he sighs from relief or from something else entirely, she’s not sure. “From your lips to somebody else’s ears,” he murmurs, and they both pretend she doesn’t grip him ten times tighter.


	6. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In February, Jasper reads articles from both _Cosmopolitan_ and _Pregnancy & Newborn_. One is slightly more applicable to his everyday life than the other. Also, he and Maria finally confirm her suspicions with medical accuracy—and figure out where to go from here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not a doctor nor have I ever been pregnant. Trust me when I say these are actually good things. But because of my lack of medical and pregnancy prowess, much of my information comes from the internet. However, my science-trained betas have yet to balk at anything in this story, so I think we're okay.
> 
> Also, please remember: Maria's pregnancy math may not resemble our earth pregnancy math. I realize there are some numerical inconsistencies between this chapter and the last, but that's entirely Maria's fault, and not mine. (At least, that is my story and I am sticking to it.)
> 
> Trigger warnings for a brief mention of cancer. No one actually has cancer. It just gets a throw-away mention. There is also a brief reference to abortion in this chapter, as well. 
> 
> And thanks (as always) to my magnificent beta-readers, Jen and saranoh. They did wonders for this chapter, but I did do some light editing before posting. Therefore, any and all errors belong to me, and they continue to be the greatest.

Victoria sets down her wine glass with a heavy hand. “So she’s—”

Jasper nods. “Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

“We’re going to her doctor on Tuesday for the official confirmation, but she took another one of those home tests yesterday. It was definitely positive.” 

Victoria nods slightly and drops her gaze back down to her glass. Across from her, Rhodes rubs his hand over his face like he’s trying to wake himself up from a bad dream. Jasper, his throat suddenly desert-parched and ten times too tight, swigs his beer like his life depends on it.

But it’s Hartley who drags fingers through her hair and mutters, “Fuck.”

“That’s sort of the place I’m at,” Jasper admits, and decides to drain the rest of his bottle.

The Hub on Friday night is a loud, crowded nightmare of a place where all the drinks are full price and the only food deal is the “buy twelve, get four free” chicken wings. There’s a whole untouched plate of the things in the middle of the table, not because they’re not delicious (they’re Jasper’s third-favorite chicken wing, which is saying something) but because the mood at their table’s just not conducive to wing-binging. Over at the pool table, Hunter and Bobbi play against two tittering twenty-something girls who’re much more interested in flirting with Bobbi than with her ex-husband (no matter how hard he tries to woo them with the “a teenager knocked me down a flight of stairs” story); at the dart boards, Mack and Idaho groan as, once again, Trip beats the two of them without breaking a sweat.

“Best three out of five,” Idaho goads.

Trip grins. “You a glutton for punishment?”

“Sounds like you’ve met his last couple girlfriends,” Mack intones, and he laughs when Idaho elbows him hard in the ribs.

If he’s honest—and there’s really no reason not to be, two beers in and surrounded by his friends—Jasper’s a little jealous of their whole not-a-care-in-the-world schtick. Because even now, four and a half full days after Maria’d broken down in her office, his brain’s still stuck on overdrive.

Because Maria’s pregnant.

His not-girlfriend, his friend-with-benefits, she’s actually—

“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Rhodes says, cutting right into the same train of thought that’s been running through Jasper’s head since Monday. “If it was me, I’d probably panic. I think I’d end up okay with it—”

Hartley snorts. “Knowing Danvers, you’d be the only one.”

“—but I’d freak out for a while, first.”

“You assume I haven’t panicked already,” Jasper responds. “Trust me, it’s taken four days to find my squishy zen center, and that’s mostly because I’m still in shock.” He shakes his head like he thinks it’ll really clear out all the shit from sleeping too little and worrying way too fucking much. When it fails miserably, he sighs. “It’s just—”

“Surreal?” Victoria suggests.

“Insane?” Hartley chimes in.

He rolls his lips together. “Terrifying,” he finishes after a beat, “but both of those work okay, too.”

The two of them screw up their faces before exchanging one of those weird married-people glances that you _know_ means they’re talking about you behind your back. Or, in Jasper’s case, right in front of you, silently smug as you toy with your empty beer bottle. 

At least, for the first two or three seconds. Because then, out of nowhere, Victoria purses her lips together like she’s struggling for the right words, and Hartley’s whole face softens.

“What?” Jasper asks, and they both shrug instead of answering. He rolls his eyes. “The last time you two made _those_ faces, you were telling me about your dead dog. Which, by the way, not as traumatizing as you think—” 

“Careful how you talk about Snuffles,” Hartley warns. “He was family.”

“No, he was a Schnauzer your niece dumped on you when she moved to Georgia.” She waves him off as she swigs her beer, and he works really hard not to roll his eyes all over again. “My point,” he continues, “is that you only go all quiet and sad-faced when it’s something a lot more important than an accidentally pregnant . . . whatever-she-is.”

“Girlfriend,” Rhodes intones.

Jasper ignores the half-second pang in his chest to point his empty bottle in the other man’s direction. “Not dating.”

Rhodes snorts. “I think at this point, with her having your kid and you still pretty head-over-heels for her, you’re dating.”

“If she elects to have the kid at all,” Victoria says quietly. When Jasper snaps his head in her direction, he discovers she’s staring down at her wine glass. There’s something gentle and cautious caught in her expression, a far cry from the woman he knows so fucking well, and he ends up swallowing hard around a sudden spike of nervousness. Victoria just shakes her head. “I hate to be the one to play devil’s advocate right now, Jasper, but from everything you’ve told us, she’s a career-oriented woman who likes her easy, no-strings attached life as it is. She might not want to have a baby.”

Hartley nods, her thumb tracing random patters on her beer bottle. Rhodes nabs a lukewarm chicken wing off the platter just to pick at the saucy skin.

And after watching the three of them for a long time, his stomach swimming around like he’s just stepped off a cheap county fair tilt-a-whirl, Jasper shrugs. “We’ll cross that bridge if we get there, I guess,” he says lightly.

“And you’re okay with that?” Victoria asks. 

“That’s not my decision.”

“And _that_ is not an answer to the question.” 

Jasper scowls at her, ready to either glance away or show his full distain for this line of questioning by rolling his eyes again, but Victoria catches and holds his gaze. A flicker of worry flashes across all her usual fire and steel, and his throat tightens. “I’m not asking you to decide her fate,” she presses. “Frankly, I’d punch you if you thought you _could_. But I am asking whether you’re comfortable knowing that this woman you’re either in love with or about to fall for might decide she doesn’t want your baby.”

The swimming feeling in Jasper’s gut perks right back up, ten times stronger and more nauseating, and he drops his eyes down to the tabletop to hide his face from Victoria. After all, hiding his clenched jaw and halfway-shaky breathing’s the _least_ he can do, right about now.

Of course, there’s an answer to Victoria’s question, and it begins and ends with the fact that Jasper’s lost four nights of sleep imagining a life full of Maria and this baby. A life where he curls up in the evening with his hand on her swollen stomach, where he learns lullabies and diaper-changing strategies, and where, when the baby comes, he muddles through every step of that kid’s life _with_ Maria, one half of a partnership that lasts the rest of their lives. 

But Jasper’s no idiot. He realizes loud and clear that he’s not the one who’s spent his whole life working toward a position in the prosecutor’s office. His first husband never smashed his heart and walked away, leaving him messed up and lonely a couple months before the bar exam. And when all’s said and done, he’s not the one who’s about to gain forty pounds and a whole lot of stretch marks, or who’ll miss out on painting his toenails—never mind six or eight weeks of work.

No, all that weight—the weight of a whole new world, in a way—falls on Maria’s shoulders, and she’s allowed to shrug it off. And Jasper’s actually just about to explain that (around the lump in the back of his throat and the sloshing sensation in the pit of his stomach, naturally) when Hartley releases one hell of a sigh from across the table.

“I knew a woman a while back,” she says out of nowhere, her attention mostly focused down on her beer bottle. “Decides the best way to celebrate the end of a shitty marriage is with a bang—literally. Her and her soon-to-be ex, one last night to remember their relationship by, and lo and behold, she winds up pregnant. Except she’s a military contractor about to leave the country for a year, and her ex is . . . Well, let’s just say, she’s not handing him a baby and hoping for the best.” She shakes her head. “But because she’s not particularly keen on heading to the clinic on her own, she calls her ex. Figures he’ll understand her reasoning, respect her decision, come hold her hand. Takes two to tango, right?”

There’s a long stretch of silence before Rhodes raises his eyebrows. “Wrong?” he guesses.

Jasper’s not sure where exactly Hartley’s smile falls on the rueful-to-sad spectrum, but either way, she nods. “Six years later,” she continues, “her ex is still hurting. I think most the time, it’s because he keeps looking at her and seeing all the lives they could’ve had if it’d all come together just a little sooner.” She shrugs as she reaches for her beer bottle. “And what’s worse is that after the initial blow-up? He’s never held it against her. Anything else from their marriage is fair game, but _never_ that.”

She punctuates her story by polishing off the last of her beer in one big swig, but Jasper just frowns until his forehead hurts. “How’s it worse that he’s _not_ pissed at her for whatever he’s still feeling?” he demands. She rolls her eyes. “What? Sounds like everybody ended up okay in the end, hard decision or not.”

Hartley huffs out a breath that suggests he’s maybe the biggest idiot on the planet—a sound he’s pretty used to hearing after all these years of friendship—but before she says the same damn thing aloud, Victoria flashes him a tight smile. “Because the only thing worse than knowing you hurt someone you care about,” she answers, “is knowing that they don’t blame you for it.”

“Exactly,” Hartley murmurs, and tangles her fingers in Victoria’s hair.

They order a couple more drinks after that, plus a fresh platter of wings and three baskets of the Hub’s life-changing panko-breaded onion rings with the parmesan on top. At the scent of the food, Hartley’s whole team bum-rushes the table like they’re ravenous college kids home for spring break, and Jasper falls pretty easily into the usual rhythm of Hunter and Bobbi’s bickering and everybody else’s laughter. All of a sudden, his self-sanctioned pity party morphs into a normal Friday night out with his friends, their conversations blanketing the bar while all the other patrons glare.

Two or three times, he even forgets about Maria and the baby.

Well.

For maybe ten seconds at a time.

Once the drinking’s finished and everybody else’s driven off into the dark of a February night, Rhodes stops Jasper in the parking lot and clasps Jasper on the shoulder. “You gonna be okay?” he asks, and he shoves Jasper a little when he purposely gags aloud at the overwhelming sincerity in his tone. “I’m not asking because I think I need to call the suicide hotline and report that you’re a mess. I’m asking because I’m your friend, and like Victoria said tonight, it’s pretty obvious how you feel about Maria.”

“And like _I_ said tonight, it’s not—”

The full thrust of Rhodes’s sentence slams into him all at once, and just like that, he forgets how the fuck to string a sentence together. Rhodes raises his eyebrows, his expression already halfway to smug, and Jasper clears his throat the dead and dying words in the back of his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, his voice so fucking defensive that it actually hurt his own head.

Rhodes—because he’s the kind of quality friend who gives exactly one-half of a shit about Jasper’s discomfort—grins like he’s won the lottery. “Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought you’d say. And I’d jump right into the whole ‘you know exactly who I mean’ routine if I hadn’t read your e-mail over your shoulder the Monday after you came back from your weekend away.” Jasper’s whole body tenses up at that, but Rhodes holds up his hands. “I’m the only one who knows, and I’ll keep my mouth shut as long as you want me to.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your friend and respect your privacy?” Jasper cocks his head in disbelief, eyes narrowing, and Rhodes snorts. “I respect _you_ ,” he corrects, “and I know that none of this, no matter what ends up happening with the pregnancy part of the deal, is gonna come easy. That’s why I wanna know whether you’ll be okay or not.”

They spend a whole lot of time staring at each other in the damn parking lot before Jasper finally shrugs. “Is ‘it depends’ a good enough answer for you?” he asks.

Rhodes grins. “I’ve put up with worse.”

And to add insult to injury, the asshole laughs when Jasper flips him off.

There’s classical music on the public radio station when Jasper starts his car, and he pays half-hearted attention to it as he finally heads home for the night. The city’s dark and quiet outside the central strip of restaurants and businesses, and as he pulls into the residential areas near his own place, he imagines it like that line from _The Night Before Christmas_ : no creatures stirring, everybody settled down for a long winter’s nap. 

Except the longer he drives, the more he thinks of how lonely his place feels, all cold and empty in against the winter chill.

He’s all of three blocks from home when he pulls an illegal u-turn and heads back in the other direction.

Maria’s wearing her bathrobe when she wrenches open her front door ten minutes later, and whether he likes it or not, his heart twists itself into a knot at the surprise that blooms across her face. Her hair’s pulled up in a loose, messy twist, and as TV laughter echoes out from her living room, he swears he smells peppermint.

They blink at each other for a couple seconds before she finally blurts, “Jasper?”

“I—” he says dumbly, but for some reason, his voice sticks in the back of his throat. Her brow furrows a little, and he forces a weak smile. “Tonight was kind of a train wreck,” he says with a pathetic little shrug, “and instead of driving home, I just ended up here.”

Maria’s face softens a little. “What kind of train wreck?”

“The kind where they call in the National Guard because somebody just spilled toxic waste all over a corn field, more or less.” She laughs at that, shaking her head, and he tries not to stare at the way her hair falls into her eyes. “Listen, I can go if you want,” he says, “but I figured as long as I felt compelled to drive all the way out here, I’d at least stop and say hi.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Just hi?” 

“Just hi.”

A beat of silence stretches between them, broken only by the shitty TV soundtrack spilling out from the living room, but then, out of nowhere, she smiles. It nudges at the corner of her mouth, so tiny and private that Jasper swears it drags him toward her like gravity. 

Because in one second, his breath’s all rough and uncertain as their eyes meet.

And in the next, he’s brushing hair out of her face, her cheek warm and smooth against his fingertips.

She ducks her head at the touch, her face glowing just the _perfect_ shade of pink, but she never quite pulls away.

“I’ll make you coffee if you let me smell it,” she tells him after a couple seconds, and he blinks at her as she raises her chin. “If you want to come in.”

He grins. “Have I ever turned you down?” 

Smile or no, she rolls her eyes. “Just for that, you’re drinking decaffeinated tea,” she threatens—and holds the door open for him to step inside.

 

==

 

“You know,” Maria’s doctor says as she studies her clipboard, “I usually yell at women who wait this long before coming in to see me. You’re a rare exception to the rule.”

Maria rolls her eyes like she’s heard the same comment a thousand times, but Jasper—sitting on an extra rolling stool and definitely not fidgeting uncomfortably every time the doctor asks about vaginal bleeding or “other gynecological dysfunction”—can’t help his shitty little grin. “For the record, I fully support any yelling,” he says while Maria glares at him. “Because according to the internet—”

“Oh, good, you’re an OB-GYN, now,” Maria mutters.

“—you’re supposed to visit your doctor as soon as you think you’re pregnant, not, what, a month and a half later?” 

Maria huffs bitterly at him, but the doctor just frowns. “When did you start to suspect you were pregnant?” Maria flicks her pissed-off glare in the doctor’s direction, and she raises her hands. “It’s on the questionnaire, right before the drug-and-alcohol survey.”

Maria jaw flexes a couple times before she says, “The end of November.”

Her doctor purses her lips. “And today is February 11.”

“Yes.”

There’s about three beats of incredibly uncomfortable silence between them before the doctor plasters on an extraordinarily fake smile. “I’m still not going to yell,” she says blithely, and returns to her clipboard.

Jasper decides right in that instant that he really likes Doctor Hussain. 

Despite its slightly terrifying name, the Suffolk County Women’s Health Clinic is a charming little building with tamely painted interior walls and (a little to Jasper’s disappointment) exactly no anatomy-inspired flowers hanging in the waiting room. “I expected bright pink walls and orchids,” he’d informed Maria as they’d walked in, and Maria, predictably, had elbowed him. Jasper’d maturely retaliated by picking up a very dog-eared copy of _Cosmopolitan_ and devoting himself to learning forty-five things guaranteed to drive men wild in bed.

(Maria’d confiscated the magazine when he’d suggested they try number fifteen sometime in the very near future.)

In fitting with the whole _what you expected is definitely not what you’re getting_ theme, Doctor Hussain is a sharp-eyed woman around Maria’s age in a pretty headscarf and a no-nonsense button-down shirt. She’s also the type to click her pen rhythmically as she flips pages on the clipboard, but Jasper’s not planning to hold that against her. “I’ll go ahead and assume no illegal drugs,” she says to Maria, and she promptly shrugs off her patient’s scowl. “Don’t blame me. It’s on the questionnaire.”

“I’m an assistant district attorney,” Maria reminds her.

“I’m not sure that and drug use are mutually exclusive,” Hussain fires back. “Alcohol?”

Maria drops her gaze down to her fingernails. “Not since the end of November.”

“Cigarettes?” 

“Also not since the end of November.” 

Jasper only discovers that he’s released a choked little sound of surprise when Maria jerks her head up and scowls at him. “What?” When he decides to study the nearby pamphlet display center, she shoves his shoulder. “What, Jasper?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t know you smoked,” he says lightly, and he’s forced to raise his hands in defense when Maria releases a frustrated dinosaur noise. “Sorry, but I just figured that we’ve known each other long enough that you might’ve—”

“Told you that I smoke half a pack a month on a bad month?” she interrupts sharply. He purses his lips. “It’s a bad habit from law school, Jasper, it’s not—”

He’s not sure what shuts her up, exactly—maybe it’s his face, maybe it’s the way Hussain’s eyebrows are practically crawling up to her hairline, maybe it’s the sound of her own voice in her ears—but either way, she stops right in the middle of her sentence and sighs. Slowly, her posture loosens for the first time all morning. “No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes,” she says, her gaze flicking back over to the doctor. “No fish, no lunch meat, no soft cheese, and before you ask, no, I haven’t changed any cat boxes. I also cut down on caffeine, pretty much quit coffee entirely, and started taking an over-the-counter prenatal vitamin. Ginger for the nausea, Gatorade after vomiting.” She shrugs lightly. “As far as I can tell, I’m doing everything I’m supposed to.”

Doctor Hussain smiles gently. “I still have to ask all the questions. Standard procedure.”

“I know,” Maria murmurs, and she spares Jasper a single, desperate glance before she drops her eyes back down to her hands. 

There’s something in that glance, in those same brown eyes that’d studied him across the kitchen table Friday night and across the pillowcase Saturday morning, that sends Jasper’s pulse racing in a way he’s not totally used to. He actually fights against it for a few seconds, battening down the little wave of emotion like farmhouse shutters before a storm (at least, according to Phil’s folksy-ass stories), but eventually, reason and logic both drop away and he reaches for Maria. Both her examination gown and the little lap blanket are this pale pink cloth, and it’s so paper thin that touching her thigh over it feels a little like touching her skin. Worse, he swears that he can feel her nervousness under the fabric—that it radiates outward like heat against his palm—and he can’t keep himself from tracing a little circle with his thumb.

Maria snorts and shakes her head, but when he starts to draw his hand away, she curls her fingers around his and pins him in place with a single, tight squeeze.

Right then, he realizes for the first time that despite all his sleepless nights—despite all his obsessing about his own hopes and fears and expectations for this pregnancy thing—he’s never really stopped to consider Maria’s feelings. Her actions, sure, but not all the emotional quagmire that must creep around just under the surface of her clam. And what’s even worse is a second later, when he realizes that he’d never once rolled over to text or call her, to come and share a cup of coffee with her, or even to lie awake at her side in the dark of a shared restless night.

He strokes his thumb against her leg as he listens to Hussain’s next couple questions, and he swears—at least to himself—to stop being such a selfish dumbass.

Eventually, and after what feels like at least three hundred more questions, Hussain slides her pen into the pocket of her white coat. “If your guesswork is correct,” she says, “you’re already in your second trimester, which is very much _not_ ideal. Ordinarily, I would have seen you at eight or ten weeks along, and we would have done blood work, a physical, and a pelvic exam. Today, we need to make up for lost time.” Maria immediately scowls, her whole body drawing up tight in preparation for a classic Chief Assistant District Attorney Hill battle royale, but the doctor shuts her up with a single sharp look. “You’re not getting out of those, or out of a very serious conversation about how I expect you to keep every one of your appointments from here until mid-July.”

Without even thinking about it, Jasper asks, “What’s in mid-July?”

Hussain shrugs. “Your baby’s birthday, for one.”

He lurches like somebody’s shocked him with a cattle prod and works hard to swallow around the sudden spike of panic that surges up out of the pit of his stomach. Maria stills too, her eyes widening slightly, but Hussain just shakes her head at the two of them. “Since we’re already doing everything out of order,” she continues, “I want to start with the ultrasound. That way, we can all check in on baby before moving on to the less pleasant parts of this appointment.”

Maria chuckles tightly, but Jasper’s about ninety-three percent sure that it’s a sorry attempt to distract him from how desperately she’s gripping his hand. “You mean we can check in on the turnip before I kick Jasper out into the waiting room,” she corrects tightly.

Hussain’s mouth kicks up into the kind of shit-eating grin that reminds Jasper why he likes her. “That’s between the two of you, but yes.”

Jasper tosses a glance in Maria’s direction. “Is a pelvic exam what I think it is?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will happily go finish up that article in _Cosmo_ , no questions asked.”

Hussain laughs aloud at his raised hands and Maria’s accompanying eye-roll before she ducks out of the room to grab whatever’s necessary for an ultrasound. (A machine? A technician? Both? Jasper’s clueless about that shit.) The second the door slides shut, though, Maria drops Jasper’s hand like he’s stung her, and silence immediately sweeps into all the empty space. For a long moment, nobody fills that sudden void, and Jasper’s reminded all at once of Saturday morning, when they’d laid in bed together and pretended that the silence didn’t feel like a bottomless pit between them.

He’d studied the small swell of her stomach under her t-shirt as much as he’d studied her face that morning, and she’d stroked fingers over his stubble like her life depended on her memorizing the shape of his jaw. But even then, the pregnancy itself’d felt a million miles away, as impossible and intangible as when she’d fallen to pieces in her office and blurted out the truth.

That same silence surrounds them now, too, like the kind of thick fog you always think you can reach out and grab with your bare hands—and that always slips through your fingers when you try.

Jasper finally swallows. “The turnip?” he asks. 

For one beautiful half-second, Maria almost grins. “I downloaded this app for my phone that tracks your pregnancy week-by-week. They use fruits and vegetables to tell you how big the baby is. Kumquat, lime, apple, turnip.” She tosses him a coy little glance. “Beats calling it a parasite.”

He huffs out a laugh. “And here, I thought maybe you just liked new-age baby names. ‘Turnip Blueberry Muffin Hill’ or some shit.”

As much as she tries to roll her eyes at his stupid fucking joke, a smile creeps across her face along with it, and Jasper can’t help leaning up to touch her cheek. Right then, he wants to kiss her the way he’d kissed her goodbye Saturday afternoon, slow and sweet on her doorstep, but he’s not sure where exactly the boundaries are anymore. Not when they’ve said more about the pregnancy in the last hour than in the week leading up to today—or when every rule they’ve ever sworn by feels like dust in the damn wind.

Maria tips her head until her lips rest against his knuckles, and he smiles against the nervousness that’s still brewing in the depths of his gut. “Listen,” he murmurs, “I know now’s not the best time to talk about this, but we still need to have our discussion about reevalu—”

“Sorry for the delay,” Hussain says as the door swings open, and Jasper immediately yanks his hand away. Maria releases a frustrated little sigh, but when he glances over, her cheeks are as pink as the examination gown. 

The doctor and her assistant—at least, that’s who Jasper assumes the redhead with the glasses is—immediately start bustling around and flicking on various machines that remind Jasper of the contraptions in futuristic science fiction movies. Hussain explains everything in the kind of easy, user-friendly way you’d expect from a doctor who deals with a lot of anxious mothers-to-be, but the second the assistant lifts up the top half of Maria’s gown, Jasper loses the plot entirely. 

Because right there, right at Jasper’s eye level, is Maria’s bare stomach.

Specifically, it’s her rounded, obviously pregnant bare stomach, a gentle slope that starts a little under her breasts and ends just before the fold of in her lap blanket. Under a shirt or sweater, she just looks a little heavier than usual, but with her skin bared, there’s no mistaking the smooth swell of a growing pregnancy.

Jasper’s throat tightens until it almost hurts, and he swallows audibly. On the exam table, Maria sucks in a hard, deep breath, and she barely flinches at the cold jelly the assistant smears on the bottom of her swollen belly.

“Lie back and think of England,” Jasper murmurs, and he grins when Maria smacks him in the shoulder. After a second (undeserved) smack, though, she settles her hand there, and he reaches up to squeeze it in his own.

Hussain keeps the monitor tilted toward her and her little helper as she presses the magic ultrasound wand against Maria’s skin, and for what feels like a lifetime or two, the only sound in the room are her little, curious hums. The longer she’s quiet, the more Maria’s fingers dig into Jasper’s shirt, but the bite of her fingernails is a nice (if painful) counterpart to the sudden racing of his heart. 

Finally, Hussain smirks appreciatively. “Mid-July is not too far off the mark,” she informs them, and immediately twists the monitor in their direction.

Jasper stops breathing.

The image on the screen’s a grainy mess of black, white, and gray, but in the middle of all the static is the image of a baby. A fully formed, fully realized little human person, with a head and an arm and a _nose_ , and—

He’s not sure what he expected out of this appointment, exactly—maybe some sort of lump, maybe the start of a human shape—but he definitely never stopped to consider the curve of a tiny back or the curl of an even tinier hand.

And he knows in that instant, staring at that grainy black-and-white silhouette, that if his heart’s still beating (and he’s not sure about that, given the whumping noise that’s echoing in his ears), it’s beating for that little turnip-sized baby and absolutely nobody else. 

“The heartbeat’s good,” Hussain observes, and Jasper blinks out of his own jumbled mess of thoughts to realize that the whumping sound’s not a hallucination but a speaker that’s hooked up to the ultrasound machine. The assistant drags around a computer mouse to add weird little lines and centimeter measurements to the picture while Hussain gestures. “Seventeen weeks is a reasonable estimate at this point. You can see the spine here, and legs tucked up here. Baby’s too shy to show us what’s between them right now, but we’ll try to look next visit if you’re interested.”

Jasper drags his eyes away from the monitor just in time to watch Maria nod roughly. She’s still staring at the screen herself, her attention all caught up in the grainy gray baby in the sea of black. When she exhales, her whole body shakes like a leaf, and she only releases Jasper’s shoulder when she needs to wipe her eyes.

And since Jasper’s still holding a hand over his mouth while he struggles to breathe properly, he can’t really complain about that.

“You wouldn’t be the first new dad to cry in my office,” Hussain notes just then, and Jasper only recognizes that his own eyes are damp and tingly after he blinks at her. She smiles fondly. “Trust me, about one dad in three breaks down the first time he sees his baby. You actually wouldn’t even be my first lawyer.”

Maria smiles. “He’s a special investigator.”

Hussain’s brow crinkles as she frowns. “You’d probably be the first special investigator, but my point stands.”

Jasper rolls his eyes at both at them, but he kind of shows his hand when his dismissive snort bubbles out like a delirious little laugh. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Maria raises her eyebrows. “You sure about that?” 

He seriously considers scowling at her, but before he actually pulls out the kind of bitch face that’d leave Barton sulking and jealous, Maria finds his hand and tangles their fingers together. It’s just one touch, one halfway meaningless moment of contact, but all of a sudden, Jasper finds it impossible to do anything besides smile.

“Glad to know you’re so hell-bent on making me cry,” he finally replies, and he can’t help laughing when Maria just shrugs at him.

After the ultrasound’s over and Hussain’s promised no fewer than a half-dozen copies of the ultrasound picture—“Just so I can remind her this is real,” he jokes, and Maria rolls her eyes—Jasper returns to the waiting room as agreed. He leafs through three different issues of _Pregnancy & Newborn_ before this weird, almost itchy feeling settles in under his skin, and he ends up ditching an article on stretch marks home remedies to pull out his cell phone. As always, the group text’s on top of all the other conversation streams, and today, his waiting messages all stem from one of Rhodes’s patented _I hate working in the basement_ rants. 

**J. Rhodes:** _I think it’s Klingon. I actually think the IT guys are listening to Klingon rock music today._

**I. Hartley:** _Doesn’t the baby lesbian IT girl put a stop to it?_

**V. Hand:** _Stop calling her the baby lesbian. Her name is Skye._

**I. Hartley:** _First: You call my secretary a baby lesbian every five minutes. Second: The amount she flirts with Bobbi? Totally a baby lesbian. Third: You’re just jealous you didn’t sniff it out first._

Jasper rolls his eyes at all three of them—and at the tiny icon that suggests somebody in the group (probably Victoria) is working on a new reply—and opens up a message of his own.

_just for the record_ , he types as his heart crawls into his throat, _baby’s healthy, about the size of a turnip, and due in the middle of July_.

He’s just barely thumbed the _send_ button when the door to the examination rooms swings open and Maria stalks out, a stack of pamphlets clutched in her hand. “She wasn’t kidding about making up for lost time,” she grumbles as she approaches, and Jasper laughs as she shoves them in her bag. Her bulky sweater helps hide her stomach, but for a second or two, he forgets they’re standing in a public space and just sort of gapes at her—or, more specifically, at her middle.

When he finally drags his eyes up to her face, she’s staring him down with this unreadable, purse-lipped lawyer expression. He forces a smile. “It go okay?”

She shrugs. “All things considered, it could have been a lot worse and with a _lot_ more yelling about regular well woman exams.” He grins a little at that, but Maria’s face never even twitches. It’s like they’re suddenly in a courtroom, Jasper thinks to himself, and he sucks in a breath as he waits for her to pierce through all his bullshit with her careful, steady gaze.

He’s still clinging to the edges of his grin when Maria finally asks, “You want to grab lunch before we go back to the office?” He blinks and frowns, a stupid involuntary reaction that leaves him kicking himself, but Maria just hikes her bag up on her shoulder. “After what happened last month, and today, I’d like to buy you lunch.”

Despite all the emotions that rattle through that one sentence—sincerity, sure, but also nervousness and a whole lot of embarrassment, two things he knows from experience that Maria hates almost as much as she hates arugula (long story)—Jasper can’t help his smug little smirk. “Buying for three while you’re eating for two?” 

“And suddenly, I’m only buying for one,” she retorts, but she also leans her shoulder against his as he laughs and leads her toward the door.

 

== 

 

When Jasper’s safely back at the office, his stomach sore from just enough lunch and way too much friendly laughter, he pulls the ultrasound picture out of his coat pocket and tucks it in his desk drawer.

“Just for now,” he tells the picture, like he expects the pixelated, turnip-sized baby to understand shit like good intentions and unbridled hope.

(Except when he swings by for dinner the next evening, he discovers that Maria’s stuck one of her copies of the picture to her fridge among all her takeout menus and outdated wedding invitations.

He keeps his fucking mouth shut, of course, but also? He figures it’s maybe a start.)

 

==

 

They’re all the way through dinner and mostly just waiting on dessert the next weekend when, out of nowhere, Tony Stark jerks his head up to the ceiling and glares at the nearest speaker. “Is this a One Direction song?” he asks. “Because I think it’s a One Direction song.”

Across the table from him, Natasha frowns. “How could you possibly know that?”

“I was about to ask the same question,” Bruce muses.

Predictably, Stark rolls his eyes at the both of them. “In case you’ve both forgotten, we have a seven-year-old girl child living at our house now.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows. “And your seven-year-old listens to boy bands?”

Stark points his coffee spoon at her. “That,” he responds after a suspiciously long pause, “is my current story, and I am sticking to it.”

“Although last year, his answer was that he needed to make sure their music was appropriate for Miles,” Pepper adds, and she only smiles when the usually subdued Bruce snorts into his tea to keep from laughing.

Stark immediately starts waving his spoon around and accusing all of them—his husband, his trial assistant, Natasha, and even the awkwardly silent Peter Parker—of harboring “the kind of traitorous thoughts that brought down the empire,” whatever the fuck that means. Jasper leans back in his chair and lets the rant wash over him, a sort of unnecessary white noise as he surveys the rest of the reception hall. The décor and the wedding party’s all decked out in red, white, and silver except for maybe the bride, the groom, and their chubby little daughter, and Jasper grins a little as his eyes land over on the head table. Jane and Thor are kissing for about the thousandth time since the reception started, their cheeks all flushed from the kind of love usually saved for bad romance movies; next to them, Darcy entertains a wiggly, grinning Astrid in her fluffy little flower girl dress. The hall’s mostly populated by Thor and Jane’s friends from outside the office—Jane’s gaggle of college girlfriends, plus her professors and colleagues from the university; Thor’s big brash band of buddies from Wisconsin, plus family and the folks from law school—but there’s a proud showing of their coworkers, too.

Like the table to Jasper’s right, with Steve and Bucky, a couple of the interns, and the two clerks who handle all the juvenile cases (including the one who’s horrifyingly draped all over Grant Ward).

Or like the table to Jasper’s left, with Barton, Phil, Fury, Fury’s wife, Peggy Carter . . . and Maria.

His eyes settle on Maria almost without his permission, and before he really knows it, he’s studying the line of her neck and the curve of her shoulder like they hide all the secrets of the universe. Since the doctor’s appointment earlier that week, they’d danced back and forth about heading to the wedding together—grabbing lunch beforehand, driving to the church and reception in one car, the whole nine yards—but Maria’d stopped him in the hallway Friday afternoon and shaken her head at him. “Phil’s worried about me,” she’d said, “and he’s decided that I need the full big-brother treatment.”

Jasper’d bit down on the corners of a smile. “Meaning he’s going to beat you up and rip the heads off your dolls?” he’d asked.

She’d blinked at him. “Is that the kind of brother you were growing up?”

“That’s the kind of brother _every_ self-respecting boy in my neighborhood was, thank you very much.” She’d rolled her eyes a little, and he’d grinned. “What kind of big brother is Phil actually being?”

“The kind where he wants to drive me to the wedding and ‘keep an eye on me.’” One of the file clerks’d appeared in the hallway then, cart and all, and Jasper’d hidden his half-second of disappointment by tugging Maria out of harm’s way and into the empty break room. She’d glanced at his hand on her side, but she hadn’t pulled away. “If I dodge him because I agreed to go with you, I think he’ll—”

“Add up a lot of things we’re not sure we want people adding up.” She’d nodded roughly, and he’d shrugged. “It’s not like I won’t see you there,” he’d said after a couple seconds. “And if you’re lucky, I’ll cash in that dance rain check from Phil’s wedding.”

She’d huffed a little laugh. “I’m sure you will,” she’d replied, and her hand’d lingered on his arm before she’d finally stepped back into the hallway.

They’d sat at opposite ends of the same pew at the church, and Jasper’d prided himself on the fact he’d only craned his head to look at her three or four times.

But now, in the bustling safety of the hall, he’s able to watch as she laughs at one of Barton’s jokes, her whole face warm and familiar among all the various strangers.

“Ten bucks says she’s either leaving or running for office,” Stark says suddenly, jabbing his spoon in Maria’s general direction. At his side, Bruce rolls his eyes. “You can be as skeptical as you want, big guy, but that doesn’t change the plain and simple fact that Hill’s acting squirrelly.”

“And everyone else’s personal life is your business?” Natasha asks.

Even with one arm draped (somewhat possessively) over the back of Bruce’s chair, Stark still manages a full-body shrug. “When the person with the top-secret personal life is the chief assistant district attorney that _this_ normal assistant district attorney answers to, yes.”

Bruce frowns. “Technically, you answer to Phil,” he points out.

“ _Technically_ , our organizational chart clearly assigns me to Hill’s ever-watchful eye, but Coulson’s a lot more fun to poke with pointy things.” Bruce snorts at that, but he also—like the long-suffering husband he is after the last year of marriage—rolls his eyes. Jasper, meanwhile, elects to wash down the weird choking sensation in the back of his throat with a swallow of coffee.

Except Stark immediately notices and jabs his spoon in Jasper’s direction. “She reveal her secrets to you?” he demands.

Jasper blinks. “To me?”

“No, to the other man at this table who hangs out with Hill on the regular.” Pepper and Natasha gift Stark with matching glares, but he waves them off. “Unfortunately, I know from experience that the girl-power wonder twins over there—”

Pepper wrinkles her nose. “Really?”

“—will cite some rule about how you never share confidences that arise during hair-braiding sessions to dodge my very important questions.” He shrugs. “You, on the other hand, are the hairless wonder, and clearly—”

“Stark, if you don’t stop talking, you’ll be a something-less wonder, and the ‘something’ won’t be your hair.” Even though the level of annoyance in Maria’s voice hovers somewhere around _simmer_ , Stark still jerks around in his seat to face her like she’s just slapped him upside the head. Natasha and Pepper both hide their smiles behind their glasses, but Bruce actually snickers. Maria just rests her hands on her hips. Her dress—plain and black, but with fluttery sleeves that help distract from the fact that it’s otherwise just a loose knit sack—barely shifts. “Or was I interrupting your attempt to horn in on someone else’s personal life?” 

Stark immediately shakes his head. “No, no interruptions here. In fact, we were _actually_ all just talking about how much we’d love you to join our table in the place of the texting tornado over there.” 

He jerks his thumb over in Peter Parker’s direction, and the kid jerks his head up from his phone for the first time in about fifteen minutes. The longer they stare him down, the redder his face turns, and Jasper suspects it’s because every one of his frantic text messages has come complete with a not-so-subtle glance at Darcy’s bridesmaid dress and her frankly impressive cleavage. 

When he tries to shove his phone into his pocket, he misses. Lucky for him, the sound of his phone clattering to the floor covers up his muttered curses. 

Maria just rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not actually here to stop whatever all _this_ is,” she assures him, and Jasper swallows a laugh at the loose little gesture she throws in their direction. “I just need to borrow Sitwell.”

Jasper frowns. “Me?” he asks as he glances up at her.

“The private investigator you put on the Broderick case texted me during the main course,” she replies with a tiny shrug, “and we need to talk about our next course of action.”

He’s not sure whether it’s the tight edge to her tone or the way her eyes search his face, but Jasper knows without thinking that she’s lying through her teeth. He immediately tosses his napkin onto the table and snags his jacket off the back of his chair. “You’ll have to fill me in on the last couple weeks,” he says seriously, and Maria nods at him as they leave the table.

There’s a terrace-type area running down the west side of the hall, and a couple servers snub out their smokes in the snow as Jasper and Maria step outside. Maria shivers slightly, her arms immediately curling around her chest, and Jasper holds out his coat without thinking. She shoots him a dirty look, and he shrugs. “You want freeze to death in your tiny dress?” he asks.

She snorts. “Tiny and yet carefully constructed,” she complains as she slides into his suit jacket and immediately returns to hugging herself against the cold. “I think I tried on about fifty dresses before I found _one_ that didn’t make me look pregnant.”

Jasper smirks. “That implies you don’t look good pregnant.”

“No, it implies that there are better ways to reveal the whole ‘impending baby’ thing than by showing up to Jane’s wedding in a dress that highlights the bump.” She pauses, her brow furrowing slightly. “And now, having said it aloud, I officially hate the word ‘bump’ to describe my current abdominal situation.”

He swallows down his laugh to offer her a warm little smile. “Just call it your turnip furnace,” he suggests, and grins when she elbows him hard in the ribs.

The stairs down from the terrace lead them into a little wooded area—a benefit, Jasper guesses, of renting out one of the fancy halls at Jane’s university as a wedding reception venue—and the trees help cut down on the amount of wind whipping around them. It’s a cold night but not frigid, the kind where their breath rises in thin clouds before disappearing into the deep blue of a clear winter sky. At first, their shoulders brush as they walk down the little stone path, but after long enough, their arms and hands join in on the action, and the steady, warm touch that grounds Jasper even as they stay as absolutely pin-drop silent as the night itself.

Finally, though, Maria releases a soft sigh. “Isabelle Hartley didn’t actually text me,” she admits, “but I’m sure you already guessed that.” 

Jasper shrugs, ready to crack a joke about Maria’s “fondness” (quotation marks required) for their favorite private contractor—but when he glances over, something in her expression stops him. He rolls his lips together and watches as she digs her hands into his jacket pockets. 

“First thing Monday morning,” she says after a beat, “I have a meeting with Fury. And at that meeting, I’m going to tell him about all of this. The pregnancy, our relationship, the turnip, and my due date.” She shrugs slightly, her eyes just barely finding his. “We’ll start planning ahead for maternity leave. Steve’s usually willing to step in when Phil or I can’t be there, and if not, I think Natasha’s ready for the challenge.”

Jasper nods slightly, almost like he’s actually concerned about whether or not Natasha’s ready for a serious felony case load, but his brain’s still twisting around itself in an attempt to understand the whole _meeting with Fury about being pregnant_ thing. He scrubs a hand over his face for a second—mostly in an attempt to jump-start the flow of cold-congealed blood to his brain—but hard as he tries, he still feels kind of waterlogged. 

When Maria raises her eyebrows expectantly, though, he shrugs. “You, uh, want me to come with?” 

She snorts. “And make it a hundred times more uncomfortable than it’s already going to be? No.” The sharp edge to her tone stings, and he knows from the way she blinks at him that his expression proves it. She quickly shakes her head. “Nick’s a lot like Phil. He’s overprotective, and he’s probably going to ask a lot of questions that I’d rather answer alone. You’ll get enough torture from the office uproar that follows, I’m sure.”

“That means we’re doing this, you know,” Jasper says without thinking, and Maria immediately drops her eyes down to the path. He reaches out and catches her arm, stops her before she walks away, and even after she stills, she never jerks away from his touch. “Look, I know we never reevaluated,” he tells her, “and I know I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I’m not the one who has to do any of the heavy lifting, and if that’s not something you want—or something you want with _me_ — that’s okay. But no matter what you pick, you need to know that I—”

“I asked Jane about Astrid,” Maria says suddenly, her face soft and open in the dim moonlight. “She and the rest of the girls came by when that last nasty round of morning sickness hit, and I asked her if she’d ever considered another option. And maybe she was lying when she said no, because she definitely figured out why I was asking, but she was so _sure_. Like she’d never paused to think about a version of the world where she didn’t become Astrid’s mom.”

Jasper ignores the tight feeling in the pit of his stomach to roll his lips together. “We’re not Jane and Thor,” he reminds her gently.

“I know,” she says immediately, and she rubs a hand over her forehead as she steps away from him. She paces in a tiny circle, her shoes clicking noisily against the stone. “I’ve gone back and forth about this in my head a hundred times,” she admits after a few seconds, “and no matter what answer I land on, I’m terrified. Terrified of whether I’m even capable of being a decent parent, terrified of what this’ll do to my career, terrified of what happens to you and to _us_ if there’s a baby stuck in the middle. Because most of the time, babies don’t magically fix problems. They just make them worse.” 

She sighs roughly, her shoulders slumping, and stares out into the trees. Jasper lets the wind whip around them for a few seconds before he swallows. “Is there a ‘but’ in there, or is that your answer?” he asks, and he’s not ashamed when his voice cracks. 

She snorts a tiny laugh and shakes her head. “You were right,” she says quietly as she glances back at him, her lips curling into something that’s almost a smile. “What you said at the cabin about us liking each other, about spending more time together . . . You were right about all of it. And even though I knew you were when you said it, I blew you off, because I don’t know how to do this.” She shrugs slightly. “I don’t know how to be in a relationship that doesn’t blow up in my face. One that doesn’t hurt me _and_ everything else that matters to me. But I think I want to try it.” She gestures at the space between them, and then at where her middle’s hidden under his suit coat and her dress. “For all of our sakes, you know?”

Something like hope flickers up out of Jasper’s stomach and into his chest, but he clamps down on it _hard_ and steps toward Maria. When he touches her hip, she tilts into his personal space, her face lifting just far enough that she meets his eyes. “We don’t have to be in a relationship for you to keep the turnip,” he says, barely resisting the urge to touch the swell of her stomach. “And you don’t have to keep the turnip just to be in a relationship with me. There’s other paths.”

“Yeah, but I’m not Robert Frost. I don’t believe in taking the shitty, overgrown path with all the exposed roots just because it’s pretty. That’s usually how you land in a ravine.” Jasper actually laughs at that, and Maria grins. “I like you,” she says honestly, her hand settling on his arm. “I can maybe see this working with you. I never saw that with Mark, and with my track record, I’m not sure I’ll ever see it with anyone else.” Her smile falters a little at that, but she shrugs it off. “I always figured I’d have a kid someday. I don’t want to find out in another ten years this was my someday and I turned it down.”

Jasper shakes his head. “There are plenty of other guys who’d jump at the chance to date you and give you a turnip.”

She rolls her eyes. “You say shit like that, and this will be the shortest relationship of your life,” she warns, and he’s still snorting a laugh when she reaches up and kisses him.

It’s a warm, lazy kiss, the kind of kiss you usually hold onto until you’ve dated somebody for a good long while, and no matter how hard he tries, Jasper can’t stop himself from pulling her close. His hand slip under his coat as he tugs her against him, his grip loose enough that she can pull back if she wants but still tight enough that he feels the swell of her stomach against his own. She curls her fingernails against the back of his head as she sighs against his mouth, and he wonders whether she’s missed all this as much as he has.

His chest feels full when he thinks too long about that—or about how she shivers in his arms when they finally break apart.

“Bell pepper,” Maria says once they’ve found their breath again, and Jasper’s brow furrows. “The next vegetable on the list’s a bell pepper. Just in case you want some variety.”

Jasper grins. “You’re just making me want fajitas.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “You’re such an asshole,” she mutters, but she also tucks herself back against his chest.

 

==

 

“You know, far be it for me to tell you how to live your life,” Stark says a half hour later, “but I’m at least ninety-seven percent sure that the couple’s dance is for _couples_ , not two permanent members of the lonely hearts club with something to prove.”

Bruce, who is somehow not only willing to be seen in public with his husband but who is willing to dance with him, rolls his eyes. “Ignore him,” he encourages.

From where she’s comfortably settled in Jasper’s grip, Maria grins. “Trust me, we will,” she promises, and Jasper cackles when she steps on Stark’s toe as a parting gift.

 

==

 

“And now, the last item on the agenda,” Fury says at their staff meeting Tuesday morning, and Jasper’s stomach drops straight into his shoes. 

If he’s honest, Jasper fucking hates their weekly staff meetings. The coffee’s always watered down within an inch of its life to ensure that everybody’s able to grab a cup, the pastries usually taste like lightly frosted cardboard, and somebody (okay, Stark) always derails the discussion within the first twenty-five seconds. According to the tally marks at the top of Jasper’s notepad, Stark’s interrupted Fury’s agenda sixteen times in the last forty minutes, and at least three of those asides were really just filthy innuendos aimed over at his husband. Even as Fury closes his leather portfolio, Stark opens his mouth to offer another comment; lucky for him, Natasha’s well within paperclip flicking range and hits him right in the forehead.

Bruce snickers, Pepper presses her lips together to keep from laughing, and Phil rolls his eyes like he wants to drag all four of them into his office for a long discussion about staff meeting decorum.

Fury, however, stops the stupidity acceleration machine right in its tracks with a well-placed glare. “The longer you screw around like my sixth graders, the longer you’re stuck in here listening to me,” he warns, and everybody falls back into an uneasy silence. He nods to himself. “I wanna start by saying that even though I wrote ‘personnel change’ on your agenda sheets, that’s a little misleading. Nobody’s leaving, and even though Barton bitches about his caseload six times a day, we’re not hiring anybody new.”

At the end of the table, Clint scowls. “I don’t bitch,” he insists. Phil raises his eyebrows, and Clint huffs out a long breath. “I don’t bitch too much,” he amends.

Phil nods approvingly and pats his knee.

Fury just rolls his eye. “Nobody’s going anywhere on a permanent basis,” he continues, “but over the next couple weeks, we’re gonna start shuffling around newly filed felony cases to a couple different attorneys. Romanoff’ll grab anything that’s more-or-less in her wheelhouse—crimes with a domestic undertone, rape, sexual assaults—and Rogers’ll pick up the slack on property and non-person crimes.” Natasha and Steve exchange wary glances before they nod in relative unison. “The rest of our serious person crimes’ll stay with Coulson, and he’ll be passing off anything that’s in its final stages to Hill so she can close them out before we’re too far into the summer.”

Phil’s mouth twitches into a smile that never quite makes it to his eyes, and he very quickly flicks his gaze over at Maria. She’s sitting at Fury’s left, her fingers curled tightly around her ballpoint pen as she stares down at her legal pad. She’d clammed up the night before when Jasper’d asked her about her conversation with Fury, but all her avoidance tactics’d ended in the same general refrain: _We need to tell the rest of the office as soon as possible, because there’ll be too many rumors about why we’re shifting our workloads if we don’t._

She’d flicked the dishrag at him when he’d suggested her shifting waistline presented more of a problem, but she hadn’t argued the point, either.

He’s about a half-second away from trying to catch her attention—tossing her a sugar packet or clearing his throat, maybe—when Stark snorts and mutters, “Running for office.” His whole corner of the table glares at him, but he just waves them off.

A couple seats down from him, Darcy frowns. “Okay, wait. Assuming that Stark’s full of his normal amount of shit—”

“At least,” Natasha mutters.

“—why’s Maria _actually_ handing off incoming cases to Steve and Natasha? Is something wrong?” She squints over in Maria’s direction, her whole face crinkling. “Is this about when you were sick? Do you have stomach cancer?”

Next to her, Jane sighs. “Darcy—”

“Jane, she threw up all over this office. It was worse than when I went to Six Flags Great America in the ninth grade and rode Raging Bull after pigging out on hot dogs.” All the other interns swivel to stare at her. Darcy shrugs. “What? I like roller coasters.”

At the head of the table, Fury’s jaw twitches. “Nobody here has cancer,” he promises. When Darcy heaves a skeptical sigh, he narrows his eye at her. “You really think I’d drop something serious on you in the middle of a staff meeting? Because I don’t think even my reputation is heartless enough for—”

“I’m going on maternity leave sometime in early July,” Maria interrupts suddenly, and the whole room immediately pitches into an eerie silence. She’s standing now, her hands pressed to the tabletop as everybody gapes at her, and Jasper discovers when he swallows that his heart or something distinctly heart-shaped is now living in the back of his throat. She squares her shoulders. “Nick and I thought it made more sense to transition open cases to me now than to have me hand off half-finished cases in June and hope that nothing—”

“You’re pregnant?” 

Somehow, it’s Rogers who recovers from his shock first, his eyes as big and earnest as a golden retriever who’s about to beg for the last bite of your lunch as he stares down the table at Maria, and she immediately cuts off the end of her sentence by rolling her lips together. Silence stretches out between all of them for a few more tense seconds before she finally—and hesitantly—nods.

In a move that surprises absolutely nobody, Rogers’s face splits in an enormous grin. “Congratulations!” Around him, a couple people shake off their shock enough to nod and chime in, and Barnes even claps lightly. “Fury called Natasha and me in to ask if we could cover, but we didn’t know exactly what was going on. We thought you were getting loaned to another office or something.”

“The office of diaper changing, maybe,” Darcy suggests, but she’s grinning, too. Nearby, the little gaggle of Maria’s closest friends—Phil, Peggy, Pepper, you name them—start exchanging the kind of knowing glances that at least seriously suggest they’ve known about this pregnancy thing a _lot_ longer than they’re telling. Worse, Barton’s smirking at his hands like he’s just won the lottery, the asshole.

“Please tell me this is a test tube baby,” Stark announces suddenly, and Maria whips her head around to glare at him. Jasper considers glaring, too—in solidarity, maybe, or to chase off the feeling of nervous dread that’s twisting around in his gut—but Bruce beats him to the punch by scowling. Stark ignores both of them. “Everyone in this room has heard Maria Hill swear off relationships at _least_ a hundred and fifty times,” he says with a raise of his hands, “and yet there is now a bun in her oven. So either this parasite was cooked up in a laboratory, or she’s been voluntarily having sex with another human being.”

Still standing near the head of the table, Maria rolls her eyes. Near the _other_ end of the table, Phil huffs out the kind of breath that suggests he’d really like to smack Stark upside the head. Neither of those things present any kind of problem for Jasper or his promise to let Maria handle the whole _what to tell the office and when_ thing.

No, the problem is that the second Stark’s done speaking, Peggy, Jane, Pepper, and Natasha all glance at him in creepy, _Stepford Wives_ unison and raise their goddamn eyebrows as one.

Jasper stops reaching for his coffee cup, and for a moment, they’re locked in the greatest standoff ever told: four suspicious women versus one completely innocent accidental baby-daddy-slash-newish-boyfriend.

He wets his lips. “I, uh—” he sort of half-stammers, and reaches up to rub the back of his neck.

At the end of the table, Darcy drops her pastry in her lap. “Holy _shit_ , you’re Maria’s friend-with-benefits.”

Brown and proud as he is, Jasper knows without consulting a mirror that his face turns a whole new color at Darcy’s accusation. What’s worse, the rest of their coworkers—their professional, law-trained coworkers and very smart trial assistants, people whose lives depend on sniffing out secrets at a hundred paces—start glancing between him, Maria, and the suspicious bulge that Maria’s blazer no longer really hides.

“Wait, _Sitwell_ got Hill pregnant?” Bruce immediately reaches for Stark, presumably to physically shut him up before the entire situation spirals further out of control, but Stark swivels his chair out of his husband’s reach. “President Sitwell of the Male Spinster Association knocking up Maria ‘I don’t believe in love, just justice’ Hill is literally the most ridiculous thing to ever happen in the history of this place, no exceptions.”

Maria actually snorts a little at that, but it’s Phil who rolls his eyes. “I’m pretty sure your wedding still takes the cake, actually.”

Stark tosses his head like a snotty, scoffing teenager. “My wedding was the very thing that dreams are made of, and you know it.” When Phil shakes his head what his very clearly disbelief, the other man snaps his fingers at Bruce. “Tell him, big guy.”

Bruce levels him the kind of fed-up half-glare that always leaves Jasper wondering how the hell they’re still married. “You proposed to me on our wedding day.”

Stark grins. “Exactly.” 

“Tony, you created a fake hearing to lure me down to the courtroom while our friends and son waited in the wings and hoped I didn’t turn you down.”

His husband flaps a hand at him. “Details!”

A couple people kind of laugh at that—and Stark eats it up, further proof that the guy’s really not comfortable with anybody else having center stage for more than about ten seconds at a time—and when Jasper finally drags his eyes away from all the bickering, he discovers that Maria’s smiling at him. It’s a quiet smile, one that settles in her eyes until they sparkle, and Jasper can’t help the sort of too-warm feeling that blooms in his chest when he smiles back. For a couple seconds, he’s transported to the dance floor at Jane and Thor’s wedding Saturday night, and he swears his whole body remembers the way they pressed together for their last, lingering dance before Phil and Barton drove her home.

More than that, he remembers kissing her on her doorstep when he’d doubled back to her place after changing, the heat of their mouths chasing the cold away as they’d stumbled into her foyer and embarked on something familiar—and, at the same time, something totally new.

“I had no idea you and Sitwell were a thing,” Barnes says out of nowhere, and Jasper jerks out of his own thoughts to discover that Barnes and his husband both are standing next to Maria. The rest of the office is still either milling around or in line to congratulate Maria in person; Jasper realizes after Thor clasps his shoulder that people are congratulating him, too, and he’s just sort of missed it. 

He nods his thanks at Thor just as Maria shrugs. “To be fair, we didn’t know at first either,” she admits, and tosses Jasper a tiny glance.

Jasper smiles. “Hey, I always knew,” he replies, and she rolls her eyes before letting Rogers pull her into a hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recognize that I am woefully behind on comment replies. My goal is to hammer out the backlog this weekend. Thank you for your patience as I continue to be, well, not the most prompt. I assure you guys, you are still the greatest readers of all time. I just am enjoying this story so much that I end up spending all my time writing it rather than tackling comments.


	7. March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In March, Maria buys some new clothes and closes a nasty case (only to open another one, but that’s neither here nor there). Of course, she also spends some time with Jasper. A lot of time with Jasper. Maybe more time than she should, but she’s not thinking too long or hard about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m pretty sure that a real district attorney’s office would not sit on a case as long as happens in this story only to (a) hire a private investigator to scope out a potential suspect and (b) send a special investigator to help obtain a search warrant. Actually, I’m pretty sure most of the legal plot here would happen with police officers, electronic warrants, and no involvement from the district attorney’s office whatsoever. But since this is fiction, I’m bending the rules a little. Author’s prerogative, or whatever. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my marvelous beta-readers, Jen and saranoh. They are the greatest.

The first sign that Maria’s day is about to be an ever-loving nightmare is that she’s wearing Steve’s clothes by 9:15 a.m.

She wakes up a half-dozen times over the course of the night, tossing and turning only to toss again in a bed that, for the first time in her adult life, feels entirely too small. There’s a strong, irregular stirring sensation in the pit of her stomach, one she can’t really describe in words, and whenever she thinks she’s finally settled down for some uninterrupted sleep, it jerks her suddenly awake. 

When she’d first felt the parasite—now the size of an heirloom tomato (or as Jasper keeps saying, _Tommy the Tomato_ , which leaves Maria rolling her eyes)—wriggling around the week after Jane’s wedding, it’d reminded her of the bubbles of nerves from just before her high school production of _South Pacific_. But now, the fluttery, bubbly feeling’s gone and replaced with something different. It’s strong enough that she wonders whether she secretly scarfed down a double order of street cart tacos, because her stomach won’t stop rolling over on itself.

She kicks off the covers, rolls to her other side, drags the covers back on, and nothing helps. She paces a few loops around her bedroom, and when the stirring finally settles, she half-collapses back into bed.

For about an hour. 

Because then, the process starts all over again.

Somewhere around three in the morning, she abandons all hope of a restful night and drags herself into the kitchen. She brews a cup of peppermint tea, grabs a file out of her bag, and flops down in her most comfortable armchair. Sitting up, the tomato’s frolicking is distracting but not unbearable, and she flips idly through her notes on an upcoming trial. Somewhere in the middle of a police report, she fishes her phone out of the pocket of her bathrobe.

_I feel like I’m living in the Alien movie_ , she texts to Jasper, fully aware that the asshole’s happily asleep in his own bed. _Like this thing’ll burst out of me, worm-like and full of teeth._

When she wakes up in her chair two hours later, her tea cold and half her file on the floor, there’s a reply waiting. _so what you’re saying is that it’s going to look like you_ , it reads, and Maria purses her lips around her smile as she trudges back to bed.

She’s groggy and completely out of sorts when her alarm chimes an hour later, and all the hot water in the world (or at least, in her water heater) can’t chase away the fog that settles around her head and shoulders. She aches in places she’s not used to aching—probably from sleeping in the damn chair, she thinks with a scowl—and worse, her whole body just feels _wrong_. She leaves her robe and towel in the bathroom to wander out into her bedroom, and she spends ten minutes dripping a puddle onto the carpet to study herself in front of her full-length mirror. 

Her chest feels heavy and unfamiliar—like she’s stolen it off the girls she envied back in her high school locker room, she thinks with a little snort to herself—and her face looks rounder than she ever remembers. Everything’s soft and pink, although that might be more from the hot water than anything else, and she stretches her neck out until her usual sharp lines reappear.

But of course, neither of those things compare to the abdominal issue.

During the awful pelvic exam portion of her doctor’s appointment last month, Doctor Hussain’d warned Maria that the gentle swell of her middle might “pop” into an actual belly sometime in the near future, but Maria’d just rolled her eyes as she’d continued to slide into her usual skirts and slacks. At least, until about a week ago, when the (somewhat) hidden swell had suddenly transformed into this noticeable, weighty _thing_ that jutted out from her body. In the last few days, it’s thrown off her balance a half-dozen times and coaxed sappy little grins from Jasper a half-dozen more.

Worse, strangers have started smiling at her. Constantly. Like they’ve shared a secret while sliding past one another in the grocery store.

Maria runs her hands over all her newfound skin for a moment, the pads of her fingers finding the ugly, angry stretch marks that spider up from her hips while her palms measure the weight and heat of her stomach. She draws in a breath and imagines the tomato, six inches long and growing like a weed (according to the internet). She pictures tiny legs and arms stretching and settling, the cause of her discomfort all night long, and something deep in her heart tightens without her permission. She tries to shake it off, but her mind keeps returning to that one precise spot like a kid picking at a scab: under all that unfamiliar flesh is an actual human baby.

Lucky for her, her phone chimes before she falls too far into the rabbit hole.

**Phil:** _Clint needs 20 mins this morning to run through KG appeal args with you_

Maria squints at the message for a few seconds before thumbing open a reply. _Texting me from Phil’s phone won’t make me any more likely to agree, you know._

She’s just flicked on her closet light when her phone chimes again. _he’s buying donut holes to bribe you on my behalf,_ Clint replies from Phil’s number.

She snorts. _Your bribery better also include a bear claw_ , she threatens, and tosses her phone onto the bed.

Clint never replies, which is probably for the best given how many outfits Maria tries on and then immediately abandons. She swaps out tops, throws otherwise clean skirts into the hamper, and punctuates every minor frustration with a significantly less-minor curse. When she finally settles on a dress—wrap-style, stretchy, and unearthed from the darkest recesses of her closet—she’s already running fifteen minutes late.

She starts to have second thoughts about her outfit the second she steps out of her car in the judicial complex parking lot and realizes that it clings to all of her expanding curves like a second skin. Those suspicions are summarily confirmed when Tony Stark gapes at her so hard in the hallway that he runs groin-first into a shredder bin. 

Maria at least smirks at that before ducking into her office to adjust her neckline.

She smirks significantly less when Barnes chokes on his coffee when she walks into the break room or when Grant Ward flushes ghost white when she hands him her file from the night before. In fact, she rolls her eyes at that one.

“Write some proposed direct examination questions for Officer Cassidy,” she tells the intern as he very pointedly stares at the air directly above her left shoulder. “If I like them, I might let you question him at trial.”

Ward’s throat bobs, his ears reddening. After a beat too long, he meets her eyes and nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

Maria raises an eyebrow. “Everything okay?” Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Sharon Carter nearly miss her desk chair as she stares at them. Ward twitches and stays silent. “Well?” Maria prods.

“Uh,” Ward half-gulps. For one, almost imperceptible second, his eyes dip down to Maria’s chest, and her face flares red almost immediately. Ward jerks his head up just as fast and swallows audibly. “No,” he says quickly. “No problem. None.”

“Good,” Maria replies tightly, and strides out of the room.

And that is why, when Peggy Carter walks into her office at 9:15 a.m., Maria is wearing one of Steve’s grandpa-style cardigans over her dress.

Peggy, unsurprisingly, bursts out laughing. 

“Shut up,” Maria grumbles.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Peggy says once she’s finished snickering (and, more importantly, finished dodging the paperclips that Maria flicks at her). “We thought you might be at a loose end, but this is especially bad.”

Maria snorts and employs her best little half-glare, but Peggy just cocks an eyebrow. “For the record, I am not at a ‘loose end,’” she informs her friend as she crosses her arms over Steve’s enormous cardigan. “And as long as we’re on the subject of how wrong you are, who’s ‘we?’”

Peggy levels her an unimpressed look. “You’re wearing Steve’s clothes.”

“Don’t change the subject.” When Peggy tips her head to one side, Maria heaves a sigh. “I’m cold,” she lies. “It’s drafty in my office, my body chemistry’s broken, and I’m cold.”

“And it has nothing to do with the fact that your dress looks like you’ve wrapped yourself in cellophane?” Maria scowls, and Peggy raises her hands in a very pointed show of mock-innocence. “I’m not judging your wardrobe choice. Lord knows I could use a few more dresses like that. I just also don’t think you realized what you were wearing when you walked out of your house this morning.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “I haven’t exactly had time to buy a whole new wardrobe of parasite-friendly clothes, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she defends.

“Haven’t had time, or are afraid of committing to maternity wear because it might make your pregnancy real?”

Peggy’s question comes complete with an open, curious look, and for the first time since the other woman burst into her office, Maria purses her lips instead of answering. She drops her eyes over to her computer monitor and tries to will an e-mail to pop up—hopefully one from Fury himself, the surest way to avoid this conversation and flee from the room like it’s full of angry wasps—but of course, absolutely nothing happens. Instead, her office stays quiet and claustrophobic, the question stretching out to fill the empty spaces between them.

Peggy proves that she’s probably either a secret agent in disguise or a former MI6 interrogator by never blinking away.

Finally, Maria sighs. “Can it be both?” she asks. Peggy frowns slightly, so she gestures to her swollen stomach and ill-advised cellophane dress. “My clothes. Can they be a product of me being busy _and_ —”

Peggy snorts. “No.”

“Peggy—”

“Nothing’s ever a gray area with you, Maria. Not really.” Maria either scowls or displays some other, far less intentional emotion on her face, because Peggy’s shoulders suddenly soften. She tugs the door closed behind her before dropping into one of the empty chairs in front of Maria’s desk, and Maria glances back over to her monitor. “One of the greatest things about you,” Peggy continues after a beat, “is that you’re either all the way in or all the way out, no middle ground. Not with cases and _never_ with your personal life. For you to be here, twenty weeks along in your—”

“Nineteen,” Maria cuts in. Peggy blinks at her, and she shrugs. “As long as you’re playing head-doctor today, I’m at nineteen weeks, not twenty.”

The corner of Peggy’s incredibly red mouth twitches into a tiny smile. “You’re nineteen weeks along,” she amends, “and you have no idea what happens next. As much as you’ve devoted yourself to this, you’re still without your eighty-seven contingency plans and exit strategies.” Maria frowns, but Peggy cocks her head to one side again. “Am I wrong?”

Maria rolls her lips together and glances away, but this time, her eyes fall onto her cell phone instead of her monitor. The lock screen previews a text from Jasper about his trip out to the Colier Woods trailer park to serve some subpoenas on—and this is a direct quote— _some of Barton’s old friends, probably_. The thought of the message—of the easy familiarity of their conversation, of their constant back-and-forth through texts and in person—curls around her heart like a fist, her whole chest tightening. 

And right then, breathing around the sudden clench in her lungs, Maria realizes that Peggy’s right.

Sure, she’s three weeks into a relationship with her friend-with-benefits, unexpectedly pregnant with his baby and diligently planning for impending motherhood, but more than that? She’s terrified. She’s terrified of the long-term implications of actually dating Jasper, of the laughter and stories they share over dinner, of the sharp spark of attraction that runs up her spine every time he crowds into her personal space and captures her mouth with his own. And whenever that terror fades, she’s filled with a whole new kind of dread, one that demands to know what happens if their laughter dries up, if their connection fizzles out to white noise, if their fondness for each other fades into tired obligation. 

She likes Jasper. She likes his text messages, his wry smiles, his love of good food and weird beer.

But she’s not sure _how_ , exactly, to like those things—or how to deal with that inevitable moment when those feelings evaporate like an ice cube on a hot summer’s day.

She draws in a long breath and swallows before glancing back at Peggy.

“It’s a lot,” she finally admits, and the tight feeling in her chest loosens slightly at her friend’s soft, sympathetic smile. “It’s not that I don’t want this. I’m not even unhappy about the situation. Shocked, sometimes, but not—” The words slip away from her, somehow, and she shakes her head. “It’s a lot of change, all at once,” she continues after a few seconds too long, “and I’m still trying to adjust. Especially since, until a few weeks ago, I’d sworn off relationships for the rest of my natural life.”

“Which was bollocks.” Maria frowns at that, her whole face tightening, but Peggy waves her off with a roll of her eyes. “So your bastard ex-husband brutalized your heart seven years ago. So what? We all walk around with wounds just as deep, and we all—at least, for the most part—climb back up on that horse. And _you_ , Maria, climbed back on several months ago, no matter how much you try to argue otherwise.” 

Maria opens her mouth to protest, but for all her years of courtroom experience and trial advocacy workshops, all she’s really able to manage is a slack fish-face and a little helpless blinking. “What?” she asks dumbly.

Peggy shoots her another dubious look. “The reason we all knew you were sleeping with someone was because of how happy you were,” she says, and the fondness in her voice chases away all of Maria’s limp-wristed complaints. “For the first time in years—possibly since I started here—you weren’t stressed all the time. You were easy-going, more open.” She pauses to smile softly. “Honestly, you were just more _you_.”

The last sentence slips uninvited into Maria’s head, and for a few seconds, she’s stuck listening to it rattle around among all her Jasper-scented fears: being with someone (or maybe just Jasper) transforms her into _herself_. Peggy sits back in the chair and waits patiently as Maria mulls that over—and then, as she shakes the cobwebs away. When her eyes settle on her friend, though, she’s still speechless enough that she simply says, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that.”

Peggy shrugs. “I’ve heard good things about ‘thank you.’”

Maria flicks a paperclip at her instead.

Her office phone rings just then, and the second they both recognize the police department number on the caller ID, they spring into well-oiled action. The officer on the other line—Maria’s shining star of a witness in an upcoming trial—is young but nervous, and she sloughs off the weight of the previous conversation to walk him through some basic testimony preparation techniques on speakerphone. Peggy hovers nearby, scratching down notes on a legal pad and running interference when Barton throws open the door (without knocking, naturally) and holds out the box of bribery doughnuts like he’s the monkey in _The Lion King_.

There’s something extremely satisfying about the way Peggy closes the door on his smug grin.

By the end of the call, there’s powdered sugar on Peggy’s dress but the officer’s no longer hyperventilating. “Thanks, Miss Hill,” he says, his voice brimming with the kind of earnest sweetness that’s rare in Maria’s line of work. “I’ll see you next week for the final run-through, right?”

“Absolutely,” Maria replies, and actually smiles as she hangs up the phone.

It’s only after handing over the notes from the call (and stealing another handful of doughnut holes) that Peggy says, “The girls and I.” Maria frowns slightly, and her friend sighs. “The ‘we’ I referred to earlier, the ones who thought you might be at a loose end? That’s Pepper, Darcy, Jane, Natasha, and me. We’re the ones who worry about you—and the ones who are taking you shopping over lunch for a better outfit.”

Maria stops tearing her bear claw into bite-sized pieces to wrinkle her nose. “I don’t know what makes you think I have time to go shopping, but—”

“Heimdall’s coming in at two for a meeting about the Broderick case,” Peggy cuts in. Maria’s stomach swims a little at the all-knowing cut of her jaw and jaunty jut of her hip against the doorjamb, but it sinks when she pulls up her Outlook calendar and confirms the meeting. She grits her teeth, but Peggy just smirks. “That’s what I thought,” she says as she steps into the hallway. “I’ll see you at noon.”

“If the store name has any references to peapods, I’m leaving!” Maria shouts after her, but Peggy just cackles.

It’s a good half-hour later when Natasha Romanoff suddenly pokes her head into Maria’s office. Maria jerks in surprise—Natasha’s surprisingly silent for a woman in very tall shoes—but her friend ignores her momentary distress in order to study her outfit. Slowly, her mouth curves into a devilish little smile. 

“With the cardigan crossed off, you just need Barton’s socks for a bingo,” she says.

Maria groans. “Oh, go away,” she complains, and Natasha’s laughter—rare and warm all at once—echoes down the hall as she walks away.

 

==

 

A little more than four hours after Peggy’s visit to her office, Maria plants her hands on her hips. “Word for word,” she repeats, tighter than before, “or there’s no deal.”

Kevin Broderick—the defendant in the retirement community burglaries and perpetual pain in Maria’s backside—snorts and crosses his arms over his chest. In his ill-fitting jail outfit—nondescript gray sweats, white tube socks, green Crocs instead of normal shoes—he looks a little like a toddler dressed in some older cousin’s faded hand-me-downs. Well, an especially hairy toddler, since Broderick’s apparently voted against shaving since his arrest.

His wiry beard reminds Maria of a whole other kind of hair, and not in a good way.

“Deal first,” Broderick all but demands, and Maria rolls her eyes. “No, I know how this shit works. I tell you who really did it—”

“Allegedly,” Maria adds, and promptly ignores Ezra Heimdall’s constipated half-glare.

“—and you walk away with all the information. Leave me hanging.” Broderick shakes his head. “Not happening. Not to me.”

“I don’t know what episode of _Law & Order_ you watched at the jail before they drove you over here, but that’s not how this works.” Broderick’s jaw tightens, his fingers curling against his sweatshirt, but Maria just shrugs. “You don’t want to tell me what you told your attorney? Fine. Your preliminary hearing’s a week away, and Judge Nguyen already said she won’t grant another continuance. And once we’re through that and you’re bound over for trial—which, alibi witness or not, you will be—it’s a quick hop to a conviction.” 

He casts his eyes down at the slim table that stands between them, suddenly silent. Maria watches him clench and unclench his hands a few times before she tosses Heimdall a quick glance. “You told him all of this before I came down here, right?”

Lips pursed into a tight, unamused line, Heimdall nods. “If we could have a moment—”

“Make it short,” Maria says with a little shrug. “It’s freezing in here, and Rogers reclaimed his sweater an hour ago.”

The on-site prisoner lockup at the judicial complex is, as one might expect, a dark and seedy corner deep in the bowels of the building, the terminal end of a long cinderblock corridor untouched by natural light. Everything’s a sort of yellowish-gray color thanks to the fluorescent lights set high into the ceilings, and Maria shivers against the persistent dinginess as she steps out of the attorney-client meeting room. A uniformed security officer nods politely at her, and she immediately nods back. She’s not sure who Heimdall bribed or blew to arrange Broderick’s transport to the building—they’re still a week from his next court date and the county jail’s not exactly known for its liberal “prisoner field trip” policy—but either way, the two jump immediately into a heated discussion as soon as the officer closes the door behind her.

She wonders whether Broderick’s some kind of jailhouse snitch, playing the field from every potential angle in order to save his own hide.

The thought alone leaves her with a bad taste in her mouth, and she scowls as she retreats back to the security check-in desk.

Jasper and James Rhodes are both waiting for her there, and their conversation halts the second she rounds the corner. Jasper slouches against the desk so aggressively that she’s surprised his spine’s still intact, but Rhodey just offers her a small smile. Jasper’d done an impressively disapproving tap-dance around the whole _trip down to lock-up to confront an asshole burglar_ thing when Maria’d swung by his cubicle to invite him along; with Rhodey himself manning the desk, it’s clear that he’s broadcast his concern far and wide. She rolls her eyes at both of them, and Rhodey shrugs.

Silent agreement, then. She’s glad that Jasper at least collects rational friends.

“Broderick giving you the runaround?” Jasper asks. 

“He apparently doesn’t want to talk to me as much as he led on,” she replies with a shrug.

“Imagine that,” Rhodey mutters, and Jasper cracks a half-smile. 

They all fall quiet after that, and Maria tries not to shift around nervously as Jasper’s eyes track up and down the length of her body. The outfit she’d worn out of the maternity shop down the road’s a lot like her usual work clothes—a gray business skirt and a thin navy sweater, all topped off with an open blazer in a sort of handkerchief cut—but every bit of it accentuates the heaviness of her middle. Despite all of Darcy’s enthusiastic cat-calling in the shop (never mind the quiet encouragement from Jane, Pepper, Peggy, and Natasha), she feels exposed, like she’s advertising her pregnancy with a giant neon sign. Worse, Jasper keeps eying her without saying anything, a sort of speechless appreciation for her new, mostly uninvited features. 

She digs her hands into the pockets on the blazer and rolls her lips together. Jasper’s mouth kicks up into one of the tiny smiles he usually saves for their dinner together.

At the security desk, Rhodey sighs. “At the risk of sounding like one of Tony’s kids,” he says, “get a room.”

Jasper grins. “Looks like the other attorney meeting room’s open, if you’re interested . . . ”

He jerks his head down the empty hallway and laughs when Maria glares at him. “I’m from a military family who believes girls should defend themselves,” she reminds him. “You see what happens if you try to leverage a quickie in a room that hasn’t been disinfected since the dawn of man.”

His grin grows until it threatens to overtake his entire face. “But if I grabbed a thing of Lysol wipes, then—”

“And now, you’re officially worse than Bruce and Tony,” Rhodey declares, holding up his hands. “Because at least with them, I know that nine-tenths of what they say is some horrifying joke meant to make us all suffer.”

Jasper snorts half a laugh. “You know they’re not actually joking, right? Maybe Banner is, but Stark means every sex-crazed word that falls out of his mouth.”

“The only reason I don’t wear a hazmat suit over to their house is my belief that they’re joking about their sex life,” Rhodey fires right back. He jabs a finger in Jasper’s direction, and Jasper rolls his eyes. “You take that from me, and you’re the one explaining to him why I’ll only meet him on neutral ground from here on out.”

Maria finally laughs at that, her voice echoing unexpectedly down the corridor as the two men glare at one another like they’re not actually dear friends. Her voice is still a ghost in the room, fading slowly around them, when the uniformed officer calls out, “They’re ready for you, Miss Hill.” She nods at him over her shoulder and, with one deep breath, tamps down on any and all traces of her smile.

With an inexperienced defendant, a charm offensive full of easy smiles and earnest reassurances works wonders. With someone like Broderick, Maria knows, the only winning tactic is to be hewn from steel and ice.

Jasper’s mouth twitches almost invisibly. “No more Miss Nice Attorney, then?” he asks.

She snorts. “You of all people know that _that_ Maria doesn’t exist,” she reminds him, but the warmth in his gaze proves once and for all that he recognizes the bold-faced lie. 

She leaves the two of them at the security desk (where, knowing Jasper, they will watch everything through the security monitors like a poor-man’s live feed) to stride down the corridor and directly into the meeting room. The uniform barely manages to shut the door behind her before she leans down, her hands on the slim table in the middle of the room, and says, “Tell me what you know.”

Heimdall’s shoulders tighten. “Maria—”

“No, Ezra,” she says sharply, and she can tell from the way he purses her lips that he, too, understands the _no more Miss Nice Attorney_ message. In front of her, Broderick shifts uncomfortably. “I have a full caseload, and personally, your client is the least of my concerns. And since I’m not in the mood to spend my whole afternoon in the basement, waiting for him to open up, it might be better if—”

“It was Jason,” Broderick blurts. A tiny hint of raw panic starts to poke out from under the thin veneer of _I’m too tough for this bullshit_ , and the man drags a hand over his scruffy face. “Jason Davidson. He’s the one who went after those ladies, not me.”

The name catches Maria off guard, and for one split second, she feels the confusion settle across her expression. She shakes off her surprise and furrows her brow. “What do you mean, Jason Davidson?” she asks. “He’s our witness, he’s not—”

“He’s your witness ‘cause he’s the one who broke in,” Broderick cuts her off. He runs nervous fingers through his hair, his leg jumping unevenly. “Jase and me, we started— Not working together, but working around each other. I knew guys who’d buy from him, he had a good eye for buildings with shitty security, that kinda thing. He scratched my back, and I scratched his.”

Maria straightens up to cross her arms over her chest. “He’s a nineteen-year-old kid,” she points out.

“And bad fucking news,” Broderick counters. Heimdall shoots him a warning glance that he ignores. He keeps his eyes—gray, darting, nervous eyes—on Maria’s face. “Jase wants to break into something bigger than dealing,” he continues, honesty seeping slowly into his voice. “He asked me a couple times, you know, where’s the best place to start lifting stuff? And me, I told him to start small. You bite off more than you can chew, you could do real time. Especially since he’s not a kid anymore.” He shakes his head. “But he kept asking, you know? ‘What about empty houses? What about old folks? What about cars?’ I couldn’t shut him up.”

“And that’s when he suddenly graduated from baggies of marijuana to breaking windows in a retirement community?” He nods jerkily, and Maria barely stands on her urge to roll her eyes. “Sorry, Kevin, but with your history? I’m a hundred times more likely to believe Jason’s story about handing out his grandma’s pills at a discount than yours about—”

“Except you can’t find him, can you?” There’s suddenly a challenge in Broderick’s tone, and a cold flash runs down the length of Maria’s spine. Her shoulders tighten without her permission as he leans heavily on the table. “You maybe need help with that, yeah? ‘Cause even if you don’t believe me, you need him to prove I’m as bad as you think I am.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Maria watches Heimdall draw in a sharp breath. “Kevin—”

“You know where Jason Davidson is?” Maria interrupts. Heimdall’s whole face folds into a frown, but she simply steps closer to the table, fingers digging into her forearms. Broderick shrugs. “I meant what I said about not caring whether you strike a deal, Mister Broderick, but this might be your one chance to win me over.”

Broderick smirks. “Look like somebody already won you over in a whole other way,” he says, his eyes flicking to her middle.

A red-hot spike of anger hits Maria right in the middle of her chest before spreading through her veins like wildfire. She bites the inside of her lip to keep her temper in check and immediately spins toward the door. “Thank you for confirming everything I thought about this meeting,” she says over her shoulder, and when the uniform’s slow in coming, she smacks the door with an open palm.

“Maria,” Heimdall says, his tone clipped and frustrated (but not, she thinks, at her). “If you leave now—”

“I’ve got a few ideas, sure.”

Broderick delivers the line with easy disinterest, but when Maria glances back over her shoulder, she can again spot the worry that burbles under the surface of his incredibly bad attitude. The officer’s face appears in the chicken-wire window in the door, and she waves him off before twisting back around. For a moment, they linger in a sort of purgatorial silence, Maria’s hands on her hips while Broderick picks at his cuticle.

“Like I said, I don’t work with Jason,” he says after a few more seconds, wetting his lips. “We don’t even run in the same circles. But I know a couple of the places he hangs out, couches he crashes on.” He shrugs again. “I can get you the information. Enough that, if you really want him, you can find him.”

Maria purses her lips briefly. “And you?” she asks. He raises his eyebrows, and she rolls her eyes. “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? Knew that Davidson was at least thinking about hitting the retirement community, and you kept your mouth shut?”

His jaw tightens slightly, his throat bobbing. “We were trying to work something out,” he admits after a beat. “He dealt at the strip mall next to there all the time, knew a lot of the inner workings of the place I didn’t. We were planning to meet up that night, later, after my busybody neighbor crashed.” He casts his eyes down at the table. “Fucking idiot.”

“As I said when we discussed this case several months ago,” Heimdall steps in, his hands in his pockets, “my client is willing to plead guilty, but not to the current charges. And given the nature of his help . . . ”

He trails off, the unspoken _I’d hope you’d be incredibly generous_ dangling heavily between them, and Maria sighs. “Three counts of conspiracy to commit burglary,” she says. Broderick opens his mouth to argue, but she cuts him off by holding up a hand. “It’s what you planned on doing, and frankly, it’s the only deal I can give you without my boss hauling me into his office and calling me the idiot of the century. You’ll probably be eligible for probation, and if that’s the case, I won’t push the judge for anything harsher.” She glances over at Heimdall. “It’s the best I can do.”

He nods. “We’ll discuss it.”

“You’ll discuss it while you write down where Davidson might be,” she retorts. “Because when I come back down here with a typed-up plea agreement, I want to be able to hand off the list of possible locations to Sitwell. No delays, and no bullshit.”

Heimdall’s expression twitches slightly at that, but Broderick smirks to himself. Apparently, his version of a charm offensive involves a lot of snarling and swearing. Finally, though, his attorney’s shoulders loosen. “We’ll be ready,” he says.

“Good,” she replies, and this time, the officer’s ready to release her from the meeting room.

Rhodey’s gone from the security desk when she arrives, and his second-in-command hardly glances up at her as she gestures at Jasper to follow. “Call Isabelle Hartley,” she instructs as they fall into step together, their arms brushing as they trudge down barren corridor. “Tell her we need her to redouble her efforts to find Jason Davidson and that we’ll be supplying her some leads in—” She glances at her watch. “—about an hour.”

His eyebrows jump up until they’re almost encroaching on what would be his hairline (if he bothered with hair, that is). “Broderick hooked you up with the witness against him?” he asks. The question drips with skepticism.

“Not exactly, no.” His mouth creases into a tiny frown, and Maria shakes her head. “I’ll fill you in after you’re done with Hartley, but for now: Broderick’s apparently a sucker who’s easily charmed by asshole teenage drug dealers.”

“You know that just leaves me with more questions, right?” 

“Maybe it’ll motivate you to work fast once we’re back upstairs.” He rolls his eyes at that, but his snorted laugh leaves Maria grinning. He gestures for her to slip into the elevator first before following closely behind; for a second, she swears she can feel a puff of his breath against the back of her neck. She’s tempted, in that moment, to kiss him, not because of anything he’s said or done but because his proximity’s still just that level of electric.

She thinks of her conversation with Peggy—about her fear that feeling might fade—and her stomach clenches in a way that’s totally unrelated to Tommy the Tomato.

Jasper hits the button for their floor before he steps back next to her, their shoulders pressing together. “And what are you going to do while I try to convince Hartley to work on the usual ‘contingent on Nick’s approval’ basis?” he asks.

Maria smirks as she glances over. “I’m going to get his approval, mostly,” she replies, and she relishes Jasper’s full-body flinch of dread.

 

==

 

Twenty-five minutes later, after her boss’s ranted and raved about Isabelle Hartley’s “merry band of dumbasses,” the general irony of having a special investigator who can’t specially investigate on his own, and the need for a small-but-dedicated police force to simply do the district attorney office’s bidding, Fury drops into his desk chair and massages his forehead. “You find this kid and you pass his information on to the actual authorities,” he instructs, a note of resignation in his voice. “Maybe nab an affidavit or two from whoever hunts him down so we can arrange a warrant and figure out whether Broderick’s blowing smoke up our asses, but you do _not_ let these assholes play hero like when they hunted down those kids for Thor.”

Maria bites down on the corners of her smirk. “Jasper wouldn’t have caught them—and convinced them to come in—without Morse and Hunter’s help.” She knows a note of fondness’s crept into her voice when Fury jerks his head over at her. She chases it away with a shrug. “They’re good people to have in our corner, Nick. They’re unorthodox and annoying, but they get the job done.”

He regards her coolly for a second before he sighs. “I think I liked you better before you liked Sitwell so damn much.”

And because there’s no real heat in his voice, Maria smiles. “You might be alone in that,” she replies, and even when he rolls his eye, he smiles.

 

==

 

It’s cold, dark, and drizzling a few nights later when Judge Ilsa Smithe wrenches open her front door and immediately groans aloud. “I hate being on call,” she complains. “It’s like you people purposely wait until Thea and Rick’s weeks are over before you show up with a search warrant and puppy-dog eyes.”

Standing at Maria’s shoulder, Jasper flashes her a sly little smile. “In our defense,” he says, “you make the best coffee out of any of the other judges.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mister Sitwell,” the judge returns, but the laughter that sparkles in her eyes tells a whole different story.

Smithe lives in a little blue house on a cul-de-sac, and as Maria wipes her feet on the mat, she swears she smells cinnamon and clove in the air. Smithe herself is dressed in a pair of slouchy jeans and a threadbare t-shirt, a far cry from the dresses she usually hides under her robes, and her long ponytail bobs as she waves them into the kitchen. There’s photographs of various landmarks lining the front hallway—the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and Big Ben, to name a few—and in several, Judge Thea Nguyen and another, unfamiliar woman mug for the camera.

“Tracey Rees,” Smithe supplies, and Maria jerks her attention away from the photographs to discover the judge looming in the doorway between the hall and kitchen. She nods towards the last picture, where all three women grin while the Golden Gate Bridge stretches out behind them. “She’s Chief Judge over in Union County. We all went to law school together. We’re thick as thieves, as the saying goes.”

“Never knew judges were into thieving,” Jasper calls from the kitchen.

Smithe snorts just loudly enough that Maria cracks a smile. “I don’t know why your office keeps him around,” she says conspiratorially.

“I’ve wondered the same thing for years,” Maria admits with a shrug, and the judge laughs as she disappears back into the kitchen.

Jasper’s already filling up the coffee pot with the lazy ease of an old friend, and Maria only remembers that he’s accompanied dozens of attorneys on this very errand _after_ he flashes her a warm, familiar smile. She unzips her windbreaker and brushes loose, damp hair out of her face, and for a moment, they hover in suspended animation: Jasper armed with an over-full pot of water and smiling, Maria lingering near the doorway and smiling back.

Judge Smithe sighs as she finishes measuring out coffee grounds. “Just because you’ve been here before doesn’t mean you get to fall down on the job,” she tells Jasper, and he laughs as she shakes her head. “The first detective to ever show up here looking for a search warrant after I became a judge,” she explains to Maria, “was nervy little Jasper Sitwell.”

“I was never _nervy_ ,” Jasper insists.

“Or little?” Smithe goads. Jasper snorts, and when the judge elbows him away from the stove, Maria purses her lips to keep from grinning. “I’d been on the bench six days,” Smithe continues as she reaches for the kettle that’s sitting on a dimly lit burner. “Sitwell here swaggered in, handed me an affidavit, and then sweat through his suit waiting for an answer.”

“To be fair, you gave me the third degree and quizzed me on the textbook meaning of probable cause,” Jasper points out.

“Only because I didn’t want to be the laughing stock of my colleagues if the evidence ended up the subject of a suppression hearing.” The scent of cinnamon wafts across the room as Smithe returns the kettle to the burner and slides a mug down the counter. “Cinnamon tea, since you’re probably not drinking much coffee right now,” she says, and Maria appreciates that the judge’s only glance at the belly is accompanied by a brief nod. “There’s milk in the fridge if you need something to cut the spice.” 

Maria nods her thanks, and Smithe, apparently satisfied with the proceedings so far, leans her hip against the countertop. Her eyes flick between the two of them and their rain-damp Suffolk County District Attorney windbreakers for a moment before she finally asks, “So, the search warrant?”

“For the current residence of Jason Davidson,” Maria supplies as Jasper pulls removes the folded sheets of paper from his jacket and hands them to the judge. They’re rippled from the humidity, and Smithe smoothes them out against the countertop as she slides on her reading glasses. “We have a team of officers waiting about a block away, they just need your approval to go.”

The judge nods slightly, and silence sweeps over the kitchen as she finishes skimming the first page and continues onto the next. There’s five sheets in all—one cover page, four affidavits—and she flips quickly through the packet before glancing over at Maria. “I thought you had Kevin Broderick for the retirement community burglaries,” she says.

Maria frowns. “You know Broderick?”

“He’s from a long line of trouble makers. Of course, so is your new friend Jason Davidson.” Smithe dips her head again, her brow tightening slightly as she reads the first affidavit. “Your office hired Isabelle Hartley to help find him?”

Jasper shrugs. “We’re old friends from the academy, and she’s a solid investigator.”

“I remember her reputation from when she was on the police force,” Smithe replies with a vague bob of her head. “The other two are her employees?”

“Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter,” Maria supplies. Her hands tighten around her mug as a little spark of worry runs down her spine. “They’re both ex-military and very reliable.”

“But they’re not the police.” Smithe abandons the affidavits to glance over in Maria’s direction, and all the fine lines on her face crinkle as she frowns. “As far as I can tell, there’s not an actual, current police officer in the lot, unless you count Sitwell here.”

Jasper snorts and rolls his eyes. “Thanks, judge,” he mutters.

Maria shoots him a warning look, her jaw tightening without her permission, but Smithe shrugs off his sarcasm and returns to the packet of paperwork. “Davidson has dozens of potential hidey-holes,” Maria explains. “We’ve been searching for him on and off since November, and this is the first time we’ve been in a position to pin him down. He’s young, but he’s smart. If he smells the police and runs off—”

“You’ll never find him again,” Smithe finishes. Maria nods, but the judge just lightly massages her temple. “You believe Broderick?”

“Yes.”

“And what about you?” Jasper blinks when Smithe tosses a glance in his direction, his face the perfect picture of mock-innocence, and he only drops the act when she narrows her eyes at him. “Your affidavit says that you think there’s evidence from the burglaries at this house of his.”

“Some, yeah,” Jasper replies, his hands digging in his pockets. Nervously, Maria realizes, and she wonders for a second whether he’s as worried about this search warrant—about this _case_ —as she is. “Davidson’s been seen pawning a whole bunch of the proceeds from the burglary. Slowly and carefully so nobody pins him down, sure, but we’ve found bits and pieces of the jewelry in a couple shops around town. Most the owners identified him no problem.”

Smithe raises her eyebrows. “Most?”

He shrugs. “He’s a weedy white kid who uses a half-dozen aliases when it suits him. Not everybody we talked to knew him from Adam.” The judge frowns slightly, and Jasper pushes away from the counter to drag a hand over his head. “Look, judge, we’ve got him hiding in a house that’s been empty since his grandma died,” he stresses. “We’ve got missing proceeds of the crime and folks who’ve spotted him selling the rest of it. We’ve got a smart ten-time loser thief who says, yeah, he was working with this kid and the kid went rogue—and apparently, a little crazy. And we’ve got Davidson hiding from our office for the last three months despite all our monumental efforts to find him.”

“Avoiding the district attorney’s office is not probable cause in and of itself, Jasper,” Smithe reminds him. 

“Yeah, but you add that in with the rest of this, and you can get there.” When she frowns, Jasper’s shoulders tighten. “Judge, you know we can get there. You wouldn’t be asking these questions if you didn’t.”

Smithe draws in a tight breath and glances back down at the affidavits. For one long, tense moment, it feels like the whole room’s stopped moving.

Finally, though, she sighs. “You’d better not be wrong,” she informs Jasper, and he grins as he hands over his pen.

A half-hour later, Maria stands in the cold, misty drizzle and watches as a half-dozen uniformed officers burst into Jason Davidson’s house like stormtroopers invading a rebel facility. The house, this dilapidated old nightmare with a sagging roof and worn siding, flares to life on the otherwise dark street, and Maria smiles slightly as two officers drag a half-dressed Jason Davidson out onto the front porch to handcuff him.

“I don’t think we would’ve gotten the warrant without you, you know.”

Next to her, Jasper jerks his head away from the spectacle, and even though they’re shadowed from the street lamp by an overgrown tree, Maria swears she feels his frown. “You know I didn’t do anything special, right?” She twists to glance over at him, and he shrugs slightly. “Smithe always wants to know that what you’re telling her on paper is what she’s getting in practice. Search warrants, testimony, sentencing recommendations . . . Everybody on the force hated her for how she always double- and triple-checked everything, but she held them accountable.” The corner of his mouth kicks up into a tiny smile. “And she didn’t care if you went back and rewrote your affidavit six times before she granted that warrant, either.”

Grinning, Maria knocks their arms together. “If you were Phil, I might accuse you of having a crush,” she teases. Jasper’s jaw tightens, his smile disappearing, and she frowns. “I know you don’t really have a crush, it’s just—”

“She sent flowers.” Jasper glances back over at her, his expression half-lost and unusually sad, and all of Maria’s teasing drops into the pit of her stomach like a ten-pound stone. He shakes his head. “After my dad got sick and I left the force, she sent flowers. Only one who bothered, even after the force notified everybody that I’d left.” He shrugs. “Maybe it was just because I was her first warrant, but you don’t really forget when somebody does something like that for you. Especially a judge.”

He falls silent again after that, his lips twitching like he’s attempting (and failing) to smile, but he never once glances away. Instead, he just stands there, his eyes tracing Maria’s face in the almost perfect dark of miserable spring night, and something deep in Maria’s chest seizes up until she swears she can’t breathe. She opens her mouth to respond, to say something constructive and chase away the helplessness that laps at the edges of Jasper’s expression.

She only realizes that she’s leaned up to kiss him when she feels the warmth of his hands sliding up her back and the rasp of his stubble against her chin.

They only kiss for a few seconds, but somehow, it still burns like a brand, and she smiles slightly as he pushes damp hair out of her face. They stare at each other for a moment, the pattering rain around them drowning out the sound of voices across the street, until she finally smiles. “Let’s go,” she says as his thumb traces the line of her jaw. “I’ll make you coffee, and we can, I don’t know, do something more useful than watching a search in the rain.”

Something warm and unfamiliar blooms in her when Jasper grins. “In a minute,” he replies, and leans down to kiss her again. 

 

==

 

“Blue walls?”

Maria groans and pushes her face into the pillow. “No.”

“Blue carpet?”

“ _No_.”

“Blue—”

“Jasper, if you say the word ‘blue’ one more time, I won’t be responsible for my actions,” she threatens, and she smacks him with her pillow when he laughs.

Sunday dawns warm and sunny, the kind of morning where you’re desperate to throw open all the windows and doors and soak up as much fresh air and sunlight as possible, and Maria ignores Jasper’s continued chuckles as she rolls over onto her back and stretches all her cramped limbs. She’d climbed out of bed in the early hours of the morning to visit the bathroom (and calm down the ever-frolicking fetus), and when she’d noticed the first happy little spring birds hopping around in her back yard, she’d started opening the drapes and windows. Now, a breeze drifts across the sheets and her bare skin, and she smiles at the scent of fresh grass in the air.

Next to her, still half-covered by the sheets, Jasper smiles. “I need to grab some photos of this new, evolved _Mariacus Hillious_ ,” he teases, his voice so warm and fond that Maria struggles to roll her eyes. “Lazy, half-naked, gloriously pregnant—”

“Nothing about this is glorious,” Maria reminds him, gesturing to her swollen middle.

“—and totally refusing to insert even the barest hint of blue in our son’s bedroom.” She groans and scrubs a hand over her face, but Jasper just props himself up on an elbow. “Carlos the Carrot deserves better than a life of sea green neutrality,” he goads. Maria reaches out to shove his stupid bald head, but he grins at her. “A boy needs blue everything and a baseball bat motif. With trucks and dinosaurs on the side, so everybody he meets knows for sure he’s a boy.”

She rolls onto her side for the express purpose of raising her eyebrows at him. “You mean they didn’t all figure that out when you shoved the ultrasound picture in their faces and pointed at his grainy little genitalia?” she asks.

His whole face crumples into a scowl. “You say it like that, it sounds creepy.”

“Given that you pointed to the wrong part of his anatomy two or three times, you’re not wrong,” she retorts, and she can’t help laughing at the horrified expression that follows.

His phone chimes right about then, an obnoxious jangling noise that’s jerked Maria awake several times in the last two weeks, and she admires the bare line of his back as he swings his legs out of bed to answer the text. He’s in his boxers and nothing else, a vision of smooth, brown skin, and Maria curls her fingers in the sheets to keep from reaching up and running her hands all over him. 

Since the night outside Jason Davidson’s house two weeks ago, she’s spent almost every night with Jasper. Sleeping with him, yes, but also just spending time with him: eating meals, watching crappy TV, cleaning out her spare bedroom as a potential home for the carrot (who they are _definitely_ not naming Carlos, no matter how many times Jasper drops the name into casual conversation). Right now, lying in bed with her t-shirt rucked up over the belly (because nothing stays down over it anymore) and her pajama pants riding too low for comfort, she should feel exposed and bare, uncomfortable around a man she’s spent almost six months refusing to call anything more than a friend with benefits.

Instead, she brushes her knuckles against the small of his back and smiles when he squirms at the touch.

“Victoria suggests we paint everything black and name him Garth,” he informs her as he abandons his phone to flop back onto the mattress. With his hands stretched above his head, he reminds Maria of a softer-edged Calvin Klein billboard model, and she runs her hand down his chest and across his stomach. He grins. “Giving me a rubdown won’t distract me from the important business of planning out Carlos’s habitat.”

Maria groans. “For the last time, Carlos is _not_ on the table.”

Jasper smirks as he rolls his head toward her. “Is it because I’m brown?” 

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” she deadpans, and she watches as he blinks at her. His jaw twitches like he’s struggling to hold onto his little grin, and she huffs a sigh at him. “Seriously, Jasper? You really think I’m rejecting a baby name due to my latent, barely concealed racism and not the fact that my brother’s name is Carl?”

His brow furrows. “Since when?”

“Since October 1979?” she fires back. He keeps staring at her, studying her face with dark, steady eyes, and she sighs as she drags her fingers through her hair. “Ed is my oldest brother, the one in the military,” she fills in. “Carl’s the second one.”

He grins. “And you’re their baby sister,” he teases.

“The baby sister who can still hide your body where it will never be found.” When he raises his eyebrows, his eyes spark like he’s issuing a challenge, and she pulls a face while she elbows him. “Carl’s more laid back than Ed,” she says after a few seconds. “He hardly flinched when I e-mailed them to tell them I was pregnant.”

Jasper frowns slightly. “You didn’t call your brothers to tell them?”

The breath that escapes without Maria’s permission sounds sharp and bitter, even to her own ears. “And face Ed’s inquisition? Thanks, but no thanks.” He chuckles lightly, and she sighs as she settles back down, her head pillowed on his shoulder. “He’d want to know everything about you,” she explains, her hand still stroking idle patterns on his chest and stomach. “Name, age, date of birth, _place_ of birth, education, hobbies, probably your shoe size—”

He grins. “Your brother’s got the same thing for big feet you do?” he jokes.

Maria pinches him, but he keeps grinning. “And once he’d collected all that information from you,” she presses, “he’d look you in the eye with the full force of the Hill stare and say, ‘I’m not at liberty to say what this is for.”

Jasper immediately busts out laughing. “And you don’t think he’s actually ‘not at liberty to say?’”

“Given how often I’ve seen him use that line on my friends, no,” she replies, and he presses his face into her hair to muffle his snickering. The last remnants of his laughter rumble through his chest like thunder, though, and even when it fades away, she swears she can hear the steady beat of his heart. She spreads her fingers across his sternum and closes her eyes. “I called my dad,” she says after a few more seconds, and the quietness of her own voice surprises her. “He’s horrible with e-mail, but he can do the phone.”

Jasper shifts around a little, and when Maria lifts her head, she discovers that he’s staring down at her, his lips pursed. “He take it okay?”

“Short of the speech about how his first grandchild shouldn’t come from his youngest, yeah,” she replies. He frowns slightly, and she shrugs off his concern. “My dad’s a good guy, but he’s spent most his adult life balancing the military and three kids. He treated me just like the boys until I hit about sixteen, and then overcompensated by treating me like I might break.” She settles back down and presses her nose into his skin. “The only reason he didn’t slug my prom date for groping me is that I broke his nose long before Dad heard about it.”

Jasper snorts a short laugh, and for a few minutes, the conversation ebbs into comfortable silence. He strokes fingers through her hair and down her arm, and she closes her eyes, reveling in the simple pleasure of his touch. His hands are callused, but strong, and when he reaches across his own body to press his palm to her belly, she actually smiles. 

Her smile falters slightly when he asks, “Your dad was a single dad?”

Gooseflesh rises along her arms, and not because of the breeze sliding through the open windows. “My mom wasn’t very good at being a Marine’s wife,” she admits with a tiny shake of her head. “She took off when I was three, and aside from a couple postcards and Christmas gifts, we never heard from her again.” She tries to shrug again, to let the little pinprick pain of memory roll off her, but Jasper just tightens his grip. “I think Carl tracked her down when he got out of grad school,” she says after a few more seconds, “but I never bothered. In part because, well, she left her three kids to fend for themselves, and in part because I think it’d hurt my dad.”

He releases a soft little breath at that, and when she glances up, she discovers that he’s smiling. It’s a different smile than the one she’s used to—gentle and sympathetic and unquestionably fond—and she reaches up for the express purposes of tracing it with her fingertips. 

“Sounds like I’ve got a tough act to follow if I’m going to hold even half a candle to your dad once Carlos gets here,” he teases, and Maria’s hand stills without her permission. “Might even need to meet your dad and grab some pointers, because otherwise—”

The end of the sentence dissolves into a breathless sigh as Maria kisses him, and by the time he fully abandons his words, she’s already shifting, rolling up onto her knees to straddle him and cup his face through the kiss. He groans into her mouth, his hands falling to her hips and pinning her in place when he shifts under her, and she swears her whole body sparks to life when he rakes teeth along her lower lip. They kiss like the first time they fell into bed together, hungry and greedy after months of flirting and pointed glances across the room, and for the first time, Maria wonders if her entire acquaintance with Jasper’s been building toward this point.

Because when he tosses her t-shirt onto the floor and pushes her away just to look at her—swollen chest, swollen belly, stretch marks, soft thighs—Maria flushes not out of embarrassment, but out of _want_. Not the want from before, where she’d craved a quick release peppered with occasional laughter, but a want that warms her down to the soles of her feet.

A want that’s part release, part laughter, part companionship. 

Jasper drags his hands, blunt nails and all, down her back, and she hisses slightly as she tips forward to kiss him hard.

“We’re not naming the carrot Carlos,” she reminds him, and he laughs into her mouth as his hands slip under her waistband.

After another hour in bed and brief, respectable shifts in the shower, they wander into the kitchen for cereal and coffee. Jasper’s in his jeans from the night before and a t-shirt that’s come to live on the top of Maria’s dirty clothes pile, Maria’s in her (elastic-waist) yoga pants and a t-shirt too tight to wear out of the house, and there’s something about the smack of their bare feet on the tile that leaves her smiling. They trade sections of the newspaper while the coffee brews, and Maria groans aloud when she discovers the Killgrave case is once again front-page news. “It’s like they’ve forgotten a kid died and just want to focus on his alleged charm,” she grumbles.

Jasper actually pauses filling his coffee cup to lean over her shoulder. “He looks like he could be kind of charming,” he says, and raises his hands when she glares at him. “I wouldn’t want to hang out with him or anything,” he clarifies, “but he’s got some charm under the shark-toothed smile.”

She scowls. “It’s times like this where I wish I would’ve seduced Rogers.”

He snorts. “Yeah, like you’re the one who did the seducing,” he retorts, and jumps away one split-second before she pinches his thigh through his jeans. 

They’re back in the spare room a half-hour later and up to their eyeballs in the crap that Maria keeps in the back of the closet—“Is this seriously a junior high yearbook?” Jasper demands at one point before she snatches the offending hardback out of his hands—when the doorbell rings. By the time Maria dumps the box of old books and photos back onto the bed and waddles (because everything feels like waddling thanks to her screwed-up center of gravity), the doorbell’s rung another half-dozen times.

Clint grins at her when she wrenches the door open and holds up, surprise of all surprises, a massive box of doughnuts from a local bakery. “Have you accepted Sunrise Doughnuts bear claws as your lord and savior?” he asks, and he laughs when she immediately closes the door on him. 

“I let him have doughnut holes,” Phil says when he walks into Maria’s kitchen a full minute later, and Maria rolls her eyes as she slides him a full cup of coffee. Clint hovers in the doorway, his lips pursed together to hide his smile. “I should have known that all that sugar after a run—” 

“And our normal post-run activities,” Clint points out.

Phil’s mouth twitches like he’s tempted to smirk. “I hold myself harmless for all of his actions,” he finishes. 

“Except for how you find all of my actions endearing.” Phil twists to shoot his husband a tight look, but Clint ignores it. He walks over and sets the box of doughnuts on the counter. “This,” he says as he opens it, “is a bribe for you running over my arguments with me one last time. Because even though I keep promising Stark I can keep my shit together, I’m kind of terrified the appellate court’s going to think I’m an idiot.”

The scent of fresh icing washes over Maria, and she sighs as she slides Clint a coffee mug of his own. “You’re going to be fine,” she says for what feels like the hundredth time.

“He’s a bad guy,” Clint replies pointedly.

“And you don’t have to remind me or the appellate court of that.” He purses his lips, and she shakes her head slightly. “I’ll play judge with you,” she reluctantly agrees, “but only if your better half will help Jasper clean out the back bedroom.”

Phil jerks his head up from his mug, and Maria swears he and his idiot husband blink in unison. “Jasper’s—”

“Pretty sure you people are having a doughnut party without me, yeah,” Jasper finishes for him, and Clint spills coffee down the front of his hoodie as he whips around to gape at Jasper’s sudden appearance. Jasper grins. “Please tell me you didn’t think I lived in my cubicle and only came out when I needed to serve subpoenas, because that misconception gets old.”

“I more didn’t know they let you out of your coffin during waking hours.” Jasper snorts and reaches for a bear claw, but Clint drags the box away. “That’s Maria-centric bribery.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “I can’t eat a dozen bear claws, Clint.”

He shrugs. “The baby might be able to.”

“See, and I’m pretty sure the baby wants his dad to help,” Jasper replies with a shrug. Phil’s eyebrows rise almost to his hairline, and Clint chokes on a mouthful of coffee, but he ignores both of them to snag a doughnut. He steers Maria away from the coffee pot by spreading a big hand across her belly, and Maria’s not sure which is worse: the flash of heat that crawls up her neck, or the weird color Clint turns behind his mug.

She swallows before she says, “Clint needs to run through his oral argument again, and then they’re both going to help us with the spare room.”

Clint scowls. “You said Phil only.”

She shrugs. “I’m pregnant and hormonal,” she replies. “I’m allowed to change my mind.”

Phil smirks around the lip of his coffee mug. “Well played.”

Maria smiles. “As long as I’m fat and uncomfortable, I might as well take advantage of it,” she returns, and grabs a doughnut before leading the men back into the spare bedroom.

They spend a few minutes pinned down among all of Maria’s memories—boxes of old notebooks from high school and college, photographs from her childhood all the way through the end of law school, books and magazines she’s moved from home to home like papery talismans—before Maria leaves Jasper and Phil to keep consolidating the junk from the closet. She steals a sip of Jasper’s coffee before she escapes, and if heat blooms across her cheeks when he leans up to kiss her, she ignores it to scratch her nails against the back of his neck. 

Clint waits for her in the hallway, scowling. “You can never bitch about us being adorable again,” he informs her as they head into the living room.

She rolls her eyes. “You two have literally given me cavities.”

“And you and Sitwell are about as cozy as—” He pauses, his brow crinkling, and Maria raises her eyebrows. “I’m usually great at metaphors.”

“Like you’re great at civil forfeiture? Because I still have nightmares over that petition you wrote.” He snorts a little, almost sneering, and proceeds to toss himself down onto the sofa, coffee and all. There’s something almost resigned in his expression—never mind in his posture—and Maria sighs as she settles into her favorite chair. “You know you don’t have anything to worry about, right?” she asks. “Because I’ve read the brief, and we’ve walked through your arguments twice already. I would’ve told you by now if I saw a gaping hole for Laufeyson to walk through, and I don’t.”

“Yeah, I know.” Clint scrubs a hand over his face before he sits up, his elbows falling to his knees. “I’ve run through it with you, with Phil, with Stark— Hell, even with Wade, though his whole ‘stand up and applaud at the end’ thing didn’t _really_ count as helping.” She chuckles a little at that, and he almost smiles. “I know I could probably recite the case law in my sleep, never mind the facts. But I’ve never argued before the appellate division before, and Killgrave’s kind of a big deal.”

“No bigger than any of the dozens of DUIs you charge and prosecute every month.” He snorts and rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, but she shakes her head. “I know you think Killgrave’s on a whole other tier of evil,” she presses, “but at the end of the day, he’s just another bad guy who put another person in danger and needs to face the consequences. Same as anybody else who sits at the defense table.”

“He killed a kid, Maria,” he reminds her, his voice sticky and a little uneven. “He killed a kid who I kind of knew—knew his folks at least—and now I need to convince three people in robes to keep him locked up.” He drags fingers through his messy hair. “ _And_ I need to convince them that Phil didn’t commit prosecutorial misconduct by keeping me on the case when he knew about my fucked-up past.”

“And you’ll do it,” Maria assures him. Something like pain flickers across his face as he glances away, and she ditches her half-eaten doughnut on the coffee table to lean forward and squeeze his knee. “You use this against me, and I will see to it that you can’t walk for a week, but you’re a good attorney.” He snorts a laugh, and she smiles. “You’ve written a solid brief, prepared a thorough argument. You’ll give Stark a run for his money next month, and deep down, you know it.”

He smirks. “Phil keeps saying the same thing.”

“God, I _must_ be hormonal if I sound like Phil,” she jokes, and his smirk transforms into a brilliant grin. She pats his knee once more before she straightens back up. “One last run-through,” she tells him, “and then, you’re officially done freaking out about this until the day of argument.”

Clint pales slightly. “But—”

“Done, Barton, and that’s an order,” she cuts in, and he rolls his eyes good-naturedly before digging his notecards out of his pocket.

As Maria’d anticipated, Clint presents his arguments like a well-oiled machine, and he handles every question that Maria, fake appellate judge for the day, lobs his way. By the time he slides into home with a concise, pointed rebuttal, Maria’s finishing her second doughnut (shut up, she’s pregnant) and grinning at him. “And you’re worried,” she teases, and he flips her off as he reaches for his mug. 

They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes after that, Clint gulping down the last dregs of his coffee while Maria sucks icing off her thumb. The breeze ruffles the blinds, and between that and the sunshine, Maria suddenly feels like her whole life’s full of spring. She knows that’ll change in a few weeks, as she grows further outward and slows down (at least, according to her doctor), but right now, she’s warm and content in a totally unfamiliar way.

At least, until Clint asks, “So, you and Sitwell are actually a thing?” 

She jerks her head away from the window in surprise only to find him studying her with those intent eyes of his. He picks at the rim of his coffee mug for a few seconds, then shrugs. “I’m not judging you or anything,” he promises. “I just kind of assumed you guys were just screwing around, but if he’s here in the morning, I mean . . . ”

He trails off, his shoulders lifting again, and Maria snorts. “Your husband’s usually the one playing the concerned older brother,” she points out.

Clint rolls his eyes. “I’m not _concerned_ ,” he says. She raises her eyebrows, and he frowns. “I’m not. You’re an adult and allowed to do whatever—or whoever—you want to do. I guess it just kind of, I don’t know, surprised me.”

“Because you, Phil, Stark, and Bruce have the market cornered on happy office romances?” she asks.

“No, because you’re the most anti-relationship person I know, and I hang out with Natasha.” Maria shakes her head at that, but she also glances back toward the window. From the way Clint sighs, she guesses that she’s wearing all her emotions—embarrassment, uncertainty, maybe even a little hurt—on her face. “It’s not bad,” he presses after a couple seconds. “If anything, it kind of works. Almost like you two have always been like this, and it’s the rest of us who are just now putting two-and-two together, thanks to your artichoke.”

Maria’s mouth quirks into a grin. “He’s a carrot this week.”

“That’s even worse,” Clint grumbles, and she laughs at the carrot-related disdain in his tone.

He’s grinning when she finally looks back over at him, his whole face warm and his laugh lines crinkling, and she shakes her head a bit as she leans back in her chair. The carrot stirs, reminding her of his presence, and she presses her palm to the side of her belly for a moment before turning all her attention to Clint. “For what it’s worth, I think we were always a little like this. We just didn’t realize it yet.” He blinks at her, surprise evident on his face, and she rolls her eyes. “I always liked him. It’s hard _not_ to like him. And even before we slept together, we spent a lot of time together as friends.” She shrugs. “But I wasted so much time dragging around my baggage that I never thought about how I could ask him to help me carry it.”

Clint studies her for a few heavy seconds before he finally scowls. “That’s disgusting,” he decides.

Maria blinks. “I don’t—” 

“Seriously, you’re complaining about Phil and me giving you cavities? You should listen to yourself. ‘I didn’t realize he’d help me carry around my baggage,’” he mocks lightly, his voice about three octaves too high to pass as hers. “Did you crib that from a Nicholas Sparks novel or what?”

“Shut up,” she retorts, and he laughs when she throws her balled-up napkin at him.

When they join their respective significant others—a term that swims through Maria’s stomach like a second carrot-sized parasite—in the back bedroom, they discover that Phil’s taken over the entire operation, complete with labeled cardboard boxes and neat piles of old junk. Clint pulls a face as he walks over to where his husband’s sorting through a stack of old paperbacks, but Jasper just grins. “Phil says that blue’s a great color for the carrot’s room and we should start painting the walls right away,” he reports.

Maria rolls her eyes at him and reaches over to shove his shoulder (and hopefully push him off the edge of the bed), but he catches her hand at the last second. She’s so distracted by the way he kisses her knuckles, his eyes twinkling, that she almost misses Phil’s sigh.

“I said that blue is a good color for a baby’s room regardless of sex,” he clarifies. “Baby furniture’s almost all white, anyway. It works well together.”

She snorts at him. “Well, I’ll definitely keep that in mind for when you find some child on the side of the road and decide to raise it as your own,” she retorts.

“Nine-tenths of the time, that kid’s Kate Bishop and only comes around because Phil keeps feeding her,” Clint volunteers, and for some reason she can’t quite work out, Maria grins at the way Phil tilts up to glare at his smiling, ridiculous husband.

 

==

 

“He is strong!” Thor announces to anyone willing to listen, and Maria bites down on her eye roll as he finally draws his hand away from her middle. He grins from ear-to-ear. “Your son will be fearless like you, I think. You should be very proud.”

She snorts. “I’d be prouder if he’d stop trying to claw his way out. I think half the wriggling’s just his attempt to spite me.”

Standing at the nearby snack table, Jane grins. “At least you can sleep through it,” she challenges, gesturing with a carrot stick. “Astrid learned early how to kick me where it hurts. I’m surprised I have any kidneys left.”

Thor beams as he wraps his arms around his wife’s shoulders. “Hopefully our next will not be so cruel to her mother,” he says, and drops a kiss to the top of Jane’s head.

There’s something almost overwhelmingly warm in his voice—never mind in the way that he presses his nose into Jane’s hair—but warmth or not, Jane still freezes, carrot stick halfway to her mouth. Maria raises an eyebrow, Jane shakes her head and rolls her lips together, and Thor misses the entire exchange as he untangles himself from his wife. “I must go check on my parents and brother,” he informs them. “Someone needs to ensure that he and Sif do not have another disagreement.”

From where she’s standing next to Maria, Peggy snorts half a laugh. “Is that what you’re calling the row they had in the middle of the hallway last week?” she demands. “Because from where I was standing, it was less a disagreement and more—”

Thor raises his enormous hands. “Loki’s passions have always been tremendous,” he says instead of really answering the question. “It is not for me to question how he shows his affection.”

“Meaning that, yes, he was referring to the screaming match,” Jane fills in, and Thor offers them all a brief, rueful smile before trotting off to check on his family.

For the first time in the last five or six years—because honestly, Maria can’t remember exactly when Tony Stark sauntered into the district attorney’s office and became one of the many banes of her existence—the backyard at Stark’s actually contains people other than their coworkers. Oh, the usual suspects are there, segregated into little pockets of conversation (and, in Bruce and Steve’s shared case, child-wrangling), but mingling with them are Thor and Jane’s other family and friends. In fact, Thor and Jane’d bumped back Astrid’s birthday party a full two weeks after her actual birthday to accommodate for Thor’s relatives to fly down, and now, their booming Swedish laughter echoes across the yard like thunder. Laufeyson hangs back in a circle with Thor’s other defense attorney friends, and Maria tries very hard not to glare at him.

It helps that Astrid’s sitting on his hip and playing with his hair. How she’s charmed by her uncle, Maria’s not sure, but her adorable, sunny smile helps light up the dank wasteland of awful that is Loki Laufeyson.

She glances back at the snack table and its heaping piles of food—fruits and vegetables, six kinds of chips and dips, a variety of cocktail weenies and meatballs—before she realizes that Jane’s still filling her plate. She slides up next to her friend, their shoulders almost touching, and steals a carrot stick. “So,” she says innocently, “Thor just said—”

Jane rolls her eyes. “Thor is very good at saying things without realizing how they sound,” she retorts.

“Or he knows exactly what he’s saying,” Peggy offers. Jane shoots her a tight glance, but she immediately shrugs, her sly smile half-hidden behind her red solo cup. “Despite what some of the defense attorneys in this state like to believe, you didn’t marry an idiot. In fact, I think Thor’s rather clever when he wants to be.”

Maria sighs. “Is this about the puns from last week?” 

“I’d never heard the one about the cake being in tiers,” she defends with another little shrug, and Maria wrinkles her nose only to avoid laughing.

Their little snack-table collective breaks up after that, and Maria helps herself to a few more carrot sticks as she stands on the deck and surveys Stark’s kingdom on his behalf. Conversation and warm laughter mingles together in the spring air, and despite everything over the last couple months—all the rollercoaster ups and downs that’ve left her frustrated at some times, elated at others—she finds herself smiling. These people, these attorneys, trial assistants, and interns, they’re her _friends_. As much as she’s spent her adult life (or at least, her post-marriage life) bricking up walls, these people care about her and the papaya enough to press hands to her middle and ask invasive questions about her life. 

Which, admittedly, is not the best way to prove you care, but today, it feels heady and new, like receiving a gift she never asked for.

“You know your baby daddy is doing unspeakable things to my grill right now, right?” someone behind her demands, and Maria snorts as Stark sidles up next to her. He’s eating chocolate-covered blueberries right out of the package. “I bought and raised that grill from a, I don’t know, grill-pup, and somehow, I am still evicted by Sitwell and a pair of tongs that I am ninety-two percent sure he brought from home.”

He tips the bag in Maria’s direction, and she rolls her eyes before helping herself to a handful. “Is this your way of commenting on my love life like the rest of the office?”

“No, this is how I tell you that you chose poorly because Jasper Sitwell is a shameful grill-stealer.” Maria hides her laugh behind her hand, but Stark grins anyway. “You could’ve done worse,” he says after a couple beats. “Not because I’m the resident expert on relationships—hell knows I won the marital lottery by accident—but because I’ve heard it through the grapevine that it’s hard for women over thirty to find guys who _don’t_ still live in their parents’ basements.” He shakes the bag of blueberries for a second before glancing over at Maria. “He _does_ have his own place, right? I don’t need to be worried about that element of your relationship?”

Maria huffs out half a laugh. “He rents a house over near the university,” she promises. He nods and leans back against the deck railing, and for a moment, they watch one another instead of the yard. There’s something soft and almost caring caught in Tony’s eyes, and Maria finally ducks her head to avoid the full force of his gaze. “If you’re trying to play the part of supportive older brother, you should know—”

“On no planet do you have an older brother who is both as smart and as devastatingly handsome as yours truly,” he breaks in, and Maria shakes her head at him. “I just really wanted to point out that despite the fact you picked a guy who steals grills, you picked a generally good guy. All things considered, and whatever.”

She frowns. “I don’t need your approval.”

Stark shoves some more blueberries in his mouth before shrugging. “Needing approval and wanting to hear your friends say, hey, they’re glad you found the person you did are two very different things,” he replies, and she swears he winks at her before bouncing back down into the yard.

Maria rolls her eyes at his retreating back, but she smiles, too.

She wanders the yard for a little while after that, joining conversations just long enough to enjoy the punchline to a joke or the rousing climax of a courtroom war story, but after long enough, she starts to feel just a little light-headed from all the standing. She squeezes Steve’s arm as she excuses herself to sit down on one of the picnic table benches, and for a moment, she just sips her water and enjoys the quiet.

At least, until an accusatory little voice says, “I thought you said you weren’t ever going to have a baby.”

Amy Jimenez plants her hands on her hips as she says it, her whole face clenched in an elementary school glare, and Maria rolls her lips together to keep from laughing. Her serious posture and expression clash with her orange-striped shirt and her jeans, and for a moment, Maria wonders how Bruce and Tony somehow stumbled upon a perfect mix of their personalities, Dot Barnes’s fire, and Steve’s questionable fashion sense. 

She must smile at that, because Amy huffs out a sigh and crosses her arms. “It’s not nice to tell somebody something that’s not true,” she adds seriously. “It means you don’t trust them, and trust’s important.”

“To be fair, I never lied to you,” Maria promises. She gestures to the empty stretch of bench next to her, but even though she sways hesitantly, Amy never budges. “I didn’t know for sure that I was going to have a baby when I did your braid. He was kind of a surprise.”

Amy shifts her weight around slightly. “He’s a boy baby?” 

“According to my doctor, yeah.” The girl nods slightly, her eyes dropping down to focus on the conspicuous lump under Maria’s t-shirt. Maria smiles at her. “And since you only said I should have a little girl—” 

Amy’s whole face lights up in an enormous grin. “You never told me a lie,” she finishes, and Maria laughs when the girl practically throws herself onto the bench, her loose braided pigtails bouncing. She pushes stray hair out of her face before beaming up at Maria. “It’s nice that you’re having a boy baby,” she decides after a few seconds. “I like most boys, even my brothers.”

Maria grins at her. “You know, I feel the way about my brothers, too.” Amy giggles at that, her smile still as bright as the sunshine streaming into the back yard, and she squirms in delight when Maria tweaks the ends of one of her braids. “Did Bruce and Tony do your hair today?” 

“They did it one way, but Uncle Bucky came and fixed it.” She peers suspiciously around the yard for a moment before gesturing at Maria to lean down closer to her. “He said I look like a hobo when Tony does my hair,” she stage-whispers, and Maria bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “And then Teddy said that hobos look _better_ than when Tony does my hair, and then Bruce laughed and Tony got all pouty.”

Maria almost chokes on her snicker. “Tony pouts?” 

Amy grins. “Bruce says Tony pouts worse than Dot,” she reports, and this time, Maria definitely laughs aloud.

A bark of laughter echoes across the yard just then, and Maria jerks her head away from the beaming little girl to discover that, somehow, Miles and Teddy are in the middle of the yard in a tangle of _dogs_ and that Bruce, of all people, is laughing uproariously. Every time either teen attempts to climb to his knees, he’s thwarted by a face full of greyhound, and Bruce ends up clutching his thighs to stay upright. What’s worse, Tony keeps throwing Cheetos into the pile of limbs.

Maria grins. “You live with idiots,” she informs Amy as the girl tries to hide her giggles behind her hands.

“Bruce says the same thing sometimes,” Amy confides, and she leans up against Maria when Maria laughs again. They sit there in companionable silence for a few seconds as the literal dogpile breaks up. “Mama made a new rule last time I saw her,” Amy eventually volunteers, and Maria glances over to find her picking at the hem of her shirt. “She said I can play make-believe and call Bruce and Tony my dads if I want to. Because when I’m with her, I just have her and no dad, and when I’m here, I have Bruce and Tony but no mom.” She shrugs a little and smoothes out her shirt before she lifts her head. “Does your baby have a dad, or just a mom?”

Something in Amy’s voice slices right through the softest part of Maria’s heart, but she smiles slightly as she nods toward the grill. Jasper’s holding some sort of meat-related court with Steve, Clint, Pepper, and Darcy, and he grins as he flips a couple burgers. When his gaze drifts in the direction of the bench, he waves with his tongs, and Maria ignores the warmth that blooms in her belly as she waves back. 

Amy squints at him for a moment, her lips pursed. “You mean Mister Sitwell and not Mister Clint, right?” she asks after a beat.

Maria burst out laughing. “ _Definitely_ Mister Sitwell,” she assures the girl, and Amy nods as she continues studying the group by the grill. “I think he’s pretty great, but I don’t know. You think he’ll be a good dad?”

Amy shrugs. “He always fixes the grill when Tony breaks it, so maybe.”

Maria chuckles. “Hey, I’ll take it.” The girl grins at that, teeth and all, and Maria’s about to reach over and tweak her braid again when there’s a hard squirming deep in her belly. She’s not sure whether it counts as a kick, necessarily, but it catches her off guard and leaves her pressing a hand against her side while she catches her breath. Pat the papaya (as they’ve come to call him this week) wriggles a few more times before he settles, and she releases a long breath before realizing that Amy’s staring at her middle with wide, half-frantic eyes. Maria forces a smile. “I’m okay,” she promises. “I’m just not always used to him moving around, and when it surprises me—”

“Can I touch?” Amy interrupts. Maria blinks in surprise, but Amy misses it entirely, she’s so focused on Maria’s stomach. “I heard Astrid’s daddy saying he could feel the baby. Can I feel the baby, too?”

“I’m pretty sure Thor was just saying that, but if you want to try—”

Amy ignores the rest of the sentence—the warning, really, about hoping too hard to feel anything wriggling around in there—and immediately leans forward to plaster her hands against Maria’s stomach. Her palms are small but warm, and she spiders her fingers out as far as they’ll stretch, like she’s determined to cover as much surface area as possible. Her braids fall forward, swaying in the breeze, and Maria brushes a few loose strands of hair out of the girl’s face. Amy smiles at the touch, but she keeps her attention focused on the front of Maria’s shirt, almost like she expects the baby to climb out and offer her a hand.

They spend a few long seconds in silence before Amy says, “Dot really wants a baby brother.”

Maria raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“She wanted a sister, but then Savannah at Girl Scouts said that _her_ baby sister is always breaking her toys and drooling on her dolls, and now, she wants a brother.” Amy shrugs as she lifts her head, her hands still flat against Maria’s front. “I don’t know how her dads will make a baby, though. Everybody knows you need a man and a lady to make a baby.”

“That might be a good question for Bruce and Tony,” Maria offers. The girl scowls, her face crinkling, and Maria shrugs lightly. “They have three kids living with them and never got help from a lady. They probably know all the secrets.”

Amy’s brow furrows even further. “They didn’t have any babies,” she points out.

“No, but I bet you they know how you get a baby without looking like this,” Maria replies with a loose gesture to her middle.

Amy nods slightly, her serious expression loosening as she returns her attention to Maria’s belly. She rubs her thumbs in little circles, soothing little strokes like she’s planning to pet the baby through skin and muscle, and Maria can’t help her smile. When she lifts her head again, her big brown eyes are so soft and innocent that they leave Maria a little breathless. “When you have your baby, can I hold him?” she asks. 

“Absolutely,” she replies, and Amy’s responding smile warms her down to her toes.

Later, after the meat’s off the grill and Astrid’s thoroughly coated in her birthday cake, Jasper slides up next to Maria and slips his hand under the back of her shirt. “Looks like you made a cute little braided friend today,” he teases as he nods to where the kids are all scarfing down cupcakes like they’re about to experience a worldwide frosting shortage.

Maria rolls her eyes. “Shut up,” she grumbles, but she leans into his touch anyway.

 

==

 

When Maria checks her cell phone that night, Jasper’s in the shower. He’s humming an unfamiliar song, his voice carrying into her bedroom, and she smiles for a second—at least, until her eyes settle on the familiar name on her lock screen.

She studies it for a long time before she unlocks her phone and jumps straight to voicemail.

_Hey, uh, I know you’re probably busy—mostly because you’re always busy,_ the recording starts, the same as almost every other message he’s ever left, _but I’m in town next month and I thought you might want to grab dinner. My treat, if you’re interested._ There’s a long, heavy pause, and he sighs audibly. _Well, okay, call me if you’re available. Hope you’re taking care of yourself. It’ll be nice to see you._

He hangs up, and the silence that follows is deafening.

“You know, I think I like smelling like Sweet Pea Paradise or whatever that pink shit in your shower is,” Jasper says as he emerges from the bathroom. There’s a cloud of sweet-smelling steam that follows behind, and Maria forces a smile. An unconvincing smile, apparently, because his brow crinkles. “You okay?” he asks.

She nods. “Just dealing with a work call,” she lies, and promptly deletes her ex-husband’s voicemail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently put together a timeline of the MPU that lays out when each of the stories falls. You can find the current version [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/115587824957/the-mpu-a-comprehensive-timeline), although I hope to create a bigger, easier-to-read version this weekend.


	8. April

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In April, Jasper visits his biological family and undertakes some home improvement with his— Well, calling them “found family” sounds a little too kind, but you know what he means. But the problem with family is that sometimes, they roll out some hard truths. Don’t believe him? Ask Maria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This color](http://www.behr.com/consumer/ColorDetailView/430B-4) is roughly how I imagine the paint color that is repeatedly referenced.
> 
> Trigger warning for ugly sexism and general assholery. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my marvelous beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who tolerate so much from me--and who really got angry at some of the side characters in this chapter.

Jasper’s mother sighs. “You know what is a travesty?” she asks no one in particular, shaking her head. “My oldest son, _he_ is a travesty. Because he lives an hour away and never visits, and I am always left wondering whether he’s still alive.”

Jasper groans and buries his face in his hands. “ _Mamá_ —” 

“Your sisters visit. Your brother Nico visits whenever he can fly in. But you?” She huffs out a breath like a gust of wind. Across the kitchen table, in the same chairs as when they were kids, his sisters snicker aloud. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Jasper.”

“ _Ashamed_ ,” Andrea intones between her half-swallowed laughs.

“You are a disappointment,” Lisbeta agrees solemnly.

“I fucking hate you both,” Jasper mutters into his hands, and his mother whacks him upside the head with a dishtowel as what he assumes is punishment for his foul language. 

Or maybe his absence. 

It’s hard to tell, with his mom.

The kitchen in his parents’ house still smells like he remembers from his childhood, so overflowing with spice that he swears the scents climb up his nostrils and stick around for a while. Over at stove, his mom slaves over the same foods he remembers from his childhood—rice, beans, enchiladas in homemade tortillas, the whole nine yards—with a dishtowel over her shoulder and a spatula shoved in her back pocket. Her hair’s more gray than black, these days, and there’re as many wrinkles on her hands as laugh lines around her eyes, but she’s still the woman he remembers from his childhood: formidable, unflappable, and absolutely terrifying.

Worse, she’s muttering in Spanish, a sure sign she’s not done with the whole _my oldest child is a travesty beyond all human comprehension_ lecture.

He rubs his forehead a little harder than he needs to before he finally reaches for his beer.

“I don’t know if human disasters get beer,” Andrea teases, and he glares at her as she slides the bottle right out of his grip. She’s built like their mom, all round-cheeked and sharp-eyed, but her grin’s straight out of their dad’s playbook. “I mean, first you acquire that new girlfriend of yours—”

His heart crawls up into the back of his throat and lodges there. “Like I said at Christmas, we’re more figuring out what we want to be than dating.”

“—and now we find out that you’ve been neglecting our poor mother?” She rocks the bottle back and forth between her fingers as she shakes her head. “Do you want her to die of loneliness?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” their mom calls over her shoulder.

Jasper curls his lip at her, a shadow of the dinnertime faces he’d pulled a lifetime ago, and Andrea rolls her eyes as she relinquishes his beer. Next to her, Lisbeta sighs. “It’s like you two never grew up,” she complains.

“Just because you voluntarily spend all your time with little kids doesn’t mean we have to grow up,” Jasper reminds her, and she wrinkles her nose in distaste. He grins. “Where’re your ankle-biters, anyway? I figured you’d bring the legion along with you.”

“Eric had a basketball game tonight, so Tom dragged the whole crew. Kicking and screaming, according to the dozen text messages he sent me.” Andrea snickers into her wine, but Lisbeta waves her off. “Besides, Mom said you wanted to have an adult conversation, and I assumed that meant you’re dying.”

“Or gay,” Andrea pipes in, complete with a wicked grin. When he rolls his eyes at her, she shrugs. “What? All your friends are gay. It’s like there’s something in the water down there. I just assumed you’d be next.”

Jasper snorts. “This from the woman who accused me of having a girlfriend not two minutes ago,” he mutters.

“Hey, we’re not judging you,” Lisbeta says, raising her hands innocently. He sighs and reaches for his beer again, but she cuts him off at the pass by catching his wrist. Her fingers are ice cold, and he hisses a little—especially since, when he lifts his head to glare at her, she’s offering him this sweet, wide-eyed expression. “Jasper,” she says seriously, “you’re our older brother, and we love and respect you. And even if you choose to live your life with another man—”

“Oh, fuck off,” he snaps, and he jerks his hand away just as the girls both burst out into uncontrolled laughter. Over at the stove, his mother abandons dinner for the express purpose of glaring at him. He bites down on the urge to roll his eyes—because he’s pretty sure his mom could still box his ears, even thirty-eight years later—and drops his gaze to his beer. “Sorry, _Mamá_.”

She sighs. “Set the table, Jasper.”

This time, he absolutely rolls his damn eyes. “But—”

“Set the table,” she repeats, and twists back to the stove.

He maturely flips off his still-laughing sisters as he trudges over to the cabinets, but he’s surprised to discover just how much all the tension unknots once he’s out from under their scrutiny. His mom hums her approval when he leans in to kiss her on the cheek, and again when he brings down the plates. They’re a mismatched set, remnants from his childhood combined with the cheap white ones his mom’d picked up to replace all the dishes that’d broken over the years, and he grins a little at the familiar colors. Truth be told, his parents’ place still feels more like a time capsule than an actual house, a museum to his wayward youth where the upholstery fades but never changes.

Lisbeta lifts her head away from her phone (and presumably her husband’s texts) to squint at him. “You okay?” she asks, suspicion edging into her tone. “You seem a little jumpy.”

“Only because I forgot to steel myself against the two of you before heading over here,” he promises with a crooked grin, and Andrea catches him off guard by elbowing him in the ribs.

The sisters fall into a sort of lazy conversation after that, mostly ignoring Jasper as he traipses around the kitchen for silverware, glasses, the whole nine yards. A lifetime of his mom’s scolding echoes in the back of his head as he arranges spoons and knives in their proper places, and at least twice, Andrea mouths _suck up_ when she thinks nobody’s paying attention. He flicks dishwater at her a couple seconds later, though, so it’s mostly even.

He excuses himself just before the kitchen timer dings, and he waits (like all sensible older brothers with nosy younger siblings) to dig his phone out of his pocket until he’s all the way down the hall and locked in the bathroom. There’s no waiting messages, but he’s not exactly surprised by that development. Maria’s in a car on the way to the capital with an anxious Clint Barton and a pretending-not-to-be-anxious Phil Coulson, and in the morning, she’ll sit politely in the back of the appellate division’s fancy courtroom and listen to oral arguments in the Killgrave case.

“I’ll be gone forty-eight hours, but it already feels like a lifetime,” she’d complained the night before, and she’d tossed a pair of socks at Jasper’s head when he’d laughed. He’d only stopped by for dinner, but for some reason, he’d stuck around. Lounging on her bed while she’d packed had felt natural, not weird. “Barton’s falling apart at the seams, Phil’s pretending not to, and I’m—”

“Either the best or worst moral support in the universe?” Jasper’d suggested.

She’d scowled at him. “A sucker,” she’d finished, and rolled her eyes when he’d grinned.

A weird, halfway unfamiliar warmth floods his stomach when he remembers that moment, and he—the lovesick teenager he is, sometimes—unlocks his phone to open up his text message screen. He brings up a new message to Maria, but instead of typing anything, he just stares at it.

He almost leaps right out of his skin when somebody pounds on the bathroom door. “Mom’s about to go on a full-Spanish tirade about food going cold,” Lisbeta chides from the hallway, and Jasper thumps his head back against the nearest wall. “Hurry up, or we’re eating your enchiladas for you.”

“Two seconds,” Jasper grumbles, and he waits until her footfalls disappear down the hall before he flushes the (untouched) toilet and shoves his phone back in his pocket.

The hallway’s as dim as ever, lit only by one crappy light fixture with overly frosted glass, and he spends a few seconds squinting into the near dark before he heads to dinner. Lining the walls are dozens of pictures, ones he’d once studied in daylight in order to fill in the shadowed blanks from the shit lighting, and he imagines all the faces as he wanders past: his parents on their wedding day, school photos of him and his siblings from various points throughout their school years, candid shots of his nieces and nephews crawling all over his mother. There’s snapshots from his sisters’ and brother’s weddings, from various birthday parties, and even one from his police academy graduation all those years earlier. He pauses at that one, at the beaming smile of a much younger Jasper Sitwell squinting into the sunlight while his father wraps an arm around his shoulders, but the end result’s the same as always: his heart hurts, a little, and he’s forced to walk away. 

“The prodigal travesty returns!” Andrea cheers as he steps into the kitchen, and he only stands on his glare because his mother’s beaming at him. He squeezes her shoulder as he heads to his seat, the perfect cover for tugging on the end of Lisbeta’s ponytail. She sneers at him, and their mother shoots her a dirty look.

He flashes her a perfectly innocent smile as he settles into his chair. 

“Say grace,” his mother instructs.

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Mom, we’re not kids anymore. We don’t need—”

“When you are here,” she cuts in sharply, “you are the man of this house. Saying grace is part of that.” Jasper purses his lips, the fight rushing out of him like low tide sweeps away from the beach as he glances down at his hands. His sisters stay quiet, almost reverent about the whole thing, but their mother just reaches out and touches his arm. “Grace, Jasper. Please.”

“ _Sí, Mamá_ ,” he agrees quietly, and he swears he feels her smile right down to the soles of his feet.

He recites the same old grace that he’d learned back as a little kid, back before he’d realized he spoke two languages instead of the usual one and that the sisters at his Catholic school took it personally when you sang all your Christmas carols in Spanish during the big holiday assembly. His mom nods along at his Spanish, rusty as it sounds to his own ears, and his sisters murmur the end of the prayer right along with him. For those couple, magical seconds, he’s six or ten or fifteen again, and they’re one big happily family.

Except Nico lives down in Houston with his family, and there’s a permanently empty seat at the head of the table.

Jasper purposely keeps his eyes down on the plate as he sighs his _amen_.

Andrea and Lisbeta jump into a lively conversation the very second Jasper’s finished with grace, both of them regaling their mother with ugly trials and tribulations of their own motherhood, and Jasper works hard not to roll his eyes at their usual bitching and moaning. As usual, some kid’s developed an annoying habit, some other kid’s failing one class or another, and Jasper— Sometimes, he wants to hold up his hands and declare _this_ the reason he never visits, this fucking dog-and-pony show of his sisters’ happy-go-lucky married lives, doting husbands, and adorable children.

But he knows that’s not the reason he never drops by. Worse, his mom and sisters know it, too. So, like the good son he tries to be, he keeps his mouth shut, pushes his dinner around on his plate without really tasting it, and strains to listen through the white noise of his own anxiety.

“She’s just struggling so much with reading,” Lisbeta complains at one point, her wine glass dangling from her fingers. “She’s been tested for dyslexia and about a half-dozen other learning disabilities, but from the looks of it, the whole ‘sight word’ thing just is not catching on.” She shakes her head. “Her teacher is starting to talk about her repeating kindergarten.”

“Sometimes, children need extra time,” their mother says sagely. “Nico—”

Andrea rolls her eyes. “Another ‘baby Nico, the late bloomer’ story,” she grumbles, and she holds up her hands when their mother shoots her a sharp look. “What, Mom? Nico starting school a year late is not going to fix the fact that Gwennie can’t tell a P from a D, and I’m not going to apologize for—”

“Actually, friends of mine use this _thing_ with their kid that might help.” The words sort of jump out of Jasper’s mouth before he realizes he’s even thought about them, and his sisters and mom pull some quality _Stepford Wives_ shit as they rotate to blink at him. He forces himself to shrug as he reaches for his beer. “About six months ago, they— Well, they didn’t adopt her, so I don’t know what the right word is, exactly? Started fostering her, I guess?”

“Sounds like you’re talking about a rescue dog,” Andrea mutters. Their mother snorts at her.

Jasper waves them both off. “Point is,” he continues, “they’ve got a seven-year-old who’s already repeated kindergarten, and she hates all the reading-and-spelling stuff. It hardly clicks for her, I guess. But Bruce found this whole online program that’s geared toward kids learning basic reading and math skills, and I guess it’s helped a lot.” He swigs his beer as a distraction from the fact that they’re still staring at him. “I can find out the name of the program, pass it along.”

For three absolutely terrifying seconds, the table’s as silent as a funeral home at midnight. Worse, his sisters exchange these glances that are filled to the brim with raised eyebrows and little head tilts. 

His stomach drops into his shoes as he finishes his beer. “What?” he finally demands.

Lisbeta shrugs. “Nothing,” she replies, her tone so breezy that she’s practically singing. “It’s just weird, is all.”

“What’s weird?”

“You caring about other people’s kids.” Jasper rolls his eyes as dismissively as possible, but Andrea just jabs a finger in his direction. “Don’t play dumb. It’s weird that you paid attention, and you know it.”

Their mother sighs. “Don’t point at your brother, Andrea.”

Andrea wrinkles her nose. “He’s thirty-eight, _Mamá_. He can handle a little pointing.”

“Better yet, I can tell you that you’re wrong about it being weird,” Jasper retorts. His sisters both huff like they’re teenagers all over again, and he sets down his empty bottle with a thump. “Look, I don’t know what you’re implying, but trust me: just because I listened to my coworker talking about his cute little Latina foster kid doesn’t mean I had a stroke or whatever else you’re getting at.”

Andrea crosses her arms over her chest. “It is when you’ve never done it before,” she argues.

Jasper snorts. “My legion of gay friends didn’t really have kids before now, thanks.”

“And that’s the only reason?” 

Lisbeta’s question is soft and sweet, the tone of an elementary school teacher trying to coax a secret out of a crying student, and when he glances over in her direction, he’s not totally surprised to discover her expression’s just as gentle. He shifts his weight around in his chair, suddenly desperate for another beer, but she leans her elbows on the table. “You called Mom and invited yourself over because you wanted to have an adult conversation,” she points out while he drops his eyes down to his plate. “You dodged the question about your girlfriend. You barely touched any of your food. And now, you’re chiming in with kid advice, which you’ve literally never done before.”

“Ever,” Andrea emphasizes, and she shrugs when Jasper glares at her. “Hey, you can be uncle of the year while also being totally disengaged from the hard parts of parenting. That’s kind of the definition of ‘uncle of the year,’ actually.”

Lisbeta rolls her eyes. “My point,” she stresses, ignoring Andrea’s little scowl, “is that you came for a reason, and it’s obviously starting to eat at you. You might as well spill.”

He sighs. “Liz, it’s not—”

“ _Spill_ ,” Andrea echoes, her finger jabbing in his direction all over again, and he groans.

He scrubs a hand across his face for a moment, a blatant attempt to buy time as his sisters stare him down like they’re two-sixths of a firing squad. At the foot of the table, their mother’s poking at her own dinner, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. For a second, Jasper imagines her like a cartoon character and the silence as a cloud around her. Like she’s an especially thoughtful version of Pigpen from _Peanuts_ , just with quiet instead of dirt.

He snorts at the idiotic mental image, but as soon as it dissipates, he’s back in the same place: sitting at the kitchen table while his sisters wait for an explanation he’s spent the last three days planning.

He sits back in his chair and draws in one last, fortifying breath, before his mother says, “I need you girls to buy ice cream.”

They all three jerk in her direction, her voice yanking their attention over to her like they’re some kind of fucking apron-string marionettes, but she’s already pushing her chair back from the table and walking to her bag. Andrea and Lisbeta both glance in Jasper’s direction, their expressions hardening when his only response is a helpless little hand-raise. Their mom ignores all of it. “I tried a new cake recipe,” she says, almost nonsensically, “and it didn’t turn out. I need you girls to go to the 7-11 and buy me a carton of ice cream. The vanilla bean. You know the kind.”

Andrea sighs. “ _Mamá_ —”

“You are too old to talk back to me,” their mom cuts in sharply, and Andrea snaps her mouth shut. Next to her, Lisbeta purses her lips, clearly a half-second away from an argument of her own. Their mom drags a twenty out of her wallet and holds it in their direction. “It’s a nice night,” she instructs. “You should walk. Enjoy the fresh air.”

Lisbeta nods unevenly, but Andrea rolls her eyes. “This is like when we were kids and you wanted to get rid of us so you could fight with Dad,” she points out.

“Except your father is not here,” their mother says simply, “and I need ice cream.”

She waits on the front mat as the girls head down the sidewalk, her arms crossed over her chest and her expression just daring one or both of them to twist around and start arguing. Jasper hovers in the doorway between the living room and kitchen, his heart lodged somewhere around the back of his throat as he listens to the familiarly impatient _tap, tap, tap_ of his mother’s slipper against the floor. When she’s finally satisfied, she closes and locks the front door, and suddenly, it’s just the two of them alone in an empty house with only the ghosts of his childhood to keep him company.

His mother rolls her lips together. “Something is wrong, isn’t it?” she asks quietly. Her accent’s thicker when she murmurs, and for some reason, Jasper’s whole gut twists. “I remember the same face on your father, after all the doctors and the tests and—”

“No, _Mamá_ ,” Jasper immediately breaks in, and within a half-second, he’s across the living room and gripping her hands in his own. She nods unevenly, her breath shaking, and he kicks himself for being such a clueless asshole. “No, things in my life, they’re complicated, but they’re not bad. They’re _definitely_ not bad.”

His mouth twitches a little at that, an almost-smile he never invited to the party, and his mother squints at him suspiciously for a second before she nods again. He leads her over to the couch, her hands still clutching his—or maybe he’s the one clutching hers, he’s not sure.

“Remember how I told you at Christmas that I was seeing somebody?” he says after he sucks in a deep breath. “A woman from work? That we’d just started figuring out what kind of relationship we wanted, but that we liked each other a lot?” She nods a little, and he forces himself to hold onto his smile. “Well, I— I wasn’t lying when I told you that, but I wasn’t being totally honest, either.”

Her brow tightens slightly as she frowns. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that Maria and I, we— We’d been, uh, familiar with each other.” She blinks a little, and he heaves a sigh. “We were sleeping together, _Mamá_. We had been for a while. Before Christmas, before we really started dating.”

For a single, brief, heart-stopping moment, his mother stares at him so blankly that he’s convinced she’s suffering some kind of attack. His heart transitions from pounding to hammering as he starts to grope around for the words to best fill in the terrifying silence, but then, his mother—his sainted powerhouse of a mother—snorts a laugh. “You think I don’t know when my son is sleeping with a woman?” she demands, and Jasper’s not ashamed to admit that his mouth pops open in surprise. “Please. You walked in here looking like you were seventeen again, in love with that girl Colleen from your religion class. I knew you and your new girlfriend Maria were not just ‘figuring things out.’” She shakes her head. “You all act like you children invented sex for the sake of sex, but—”

“ _Mom_ ,” he snaps, and he hears the untampered horror that seeps into his own tone. His mother rolls her eyes like she’s disappointed in him, and he decides right then and there that he’s not drunk enough for this conversation. He rubs a hand over the back of his head as he collects his thoughts. “Maria and I, we were sleeping together,” he says after another few seconds, “and we went away for a weekend together, just the two of us. And while we were there, we, uh, weren’t as careful as we maybe should’ve been. And I don’t think either of us really thought about it, right away, but after Christmas, Maria sort of added a couple things together, and . . . ”

The words wriggle away from him, leaving him to trail off with a helpless little shrug. When he glances back at his mom, she’s staring at him like she’s never seen him before, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her dark eyes are huge, and Jasper swallows when he realizes they’re a little damp.

His stomach swims, but in a whole new way.

“I wanted to tell you the second I knew, but she— We weren’t really together, and I don’t think Maria knew what she wanted to do until after we went to the doctor, saw for sure what was going on.” He swallows thickly, aware the whole time that his breath and voice are way too shaky for this conversation. “But I’m, uh, gonna be a dad in July sometime, and that’s something I wanted to tell you in person.”

He’s not sure what it is, exactly—whether it’s the words that fall out of his mouth, his mother’s wet eyes, or just the fact that he’s in the living room he grew up in, the one with the wallpaper he ripped as a kid (that’s still ripped to this day)—but for the first time, the full weight of Maria’s pregnancy settles on his shoulders. Because as much as they joke about Paulie the Papaya and Eli the Eggplant, the little stranger Maria’s nurturing is their baby, his _son_ , and in a couple short months, he’ll be part of the world. He’ll be in their arms, crying and red-faced and beautiful, and Jasper’ll be responsible for raising him into a man the way his dad raised him.

The thought of being a dad’s always overwhelmed him, but all at once, the memory of his own father sweeps over him like a wave. By the time his mom reaches up and wraps arms around his neck, his breath and chest are already trembling; by the time he shoves his face into her shoulder, his eyes are already stinging and damp. He clings to his mom like he’s a kid again—or worse, like they’re in that hospital room from ten years ago—and tries desperately to keep all the dams he’s built up over the last decade from bursting wide open. 

“ _He’d be proud_ ,” his mother murmurs against his ear, and he blinks two or three times before he realizes that she’s whispering to him in Spanish. “ _Your father, he’d be proud of you. I forget to tell you that. I tell the others, and I forget to tell you_.”

Jasper nods unevenly and closes his eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he whispers back, and holds his mom a little tighter.

 

==

 

They’re eating shitty Chinese food out of the cartons two nights later when Maria cocks her head at him. “You never said how dinner with your mom went,” she says with a little wave of her chopsticks. “She freak out about the impending eggplant like you thought she might?”

Jasper ignores the tightness deep in his stomach to smile at her. “She cried and told my sisters she has a new favorite grandchild,” he says honestly, and Maria laughs so hard that she drops lo mien noodles on her belly. 

 

==

 

“You know, mate, I’m not one to tell you how to live your life, especially as your life currently involves planning for the arrival of small, gooey creatures,” Hunter says as he grabs a beer out of the half-empty twelve-pack in the corner. “But as a man who’s very familiar with women and what women want—”

“Which generally involves staying far, _far_ away from you,” Victoria mutters under her breath.

“—I think it’s my duty to inform you that most men stick to jewelry or flowers, not _this_.”

He spreads out his arms as he finishes his sentence, a large, sweeping gesture that encompasses the whole of Maria’s spare bedroom—or at least, what used to be Maria’s spare bedroom. Right now, it’s more a brave new world than a bedroom, complete with treacherous mountains of tarp-covered furniture and murky trays of green paint doubling as lakes and rivers. Half the walls are beige, the other half match the paint in the trays, and Bobbi smears white across her forehead as she finishes touching up the trim around the window.

There’s green paint on Hunter’s arms and jeans, and a bold splash of what Bobbi’d called _shut the fuck up_ white splashed across his t-shirt. 

“Hunter,” Hartley says with a sigh, “please shut your mouth on at least a semi-permanent basis.”

Hunter grins like a cartoon shark. “I know for a fact that one of you desperately enjoys my mouth.”

Over at the window, Bobbi groans. “I am never getting drunk with you again,” she warns him, but Hunter toasts her with his beer anyway.

It’s a warm, sunshiny Saturday in the middle of April, the kind of day that proves once-and-for all that, yes, spring has officially arrived. Jasper’s front flowerbeds are a sea of weeds and optimistic little buds that hope to survive into the harsh summer months; here, at Maria’s place, there’s a row of daffodils lining the front walk and fluffy little bunny rabbits all over the lawn. Jasper’d scared three or four of them as he’d held the door open for Maria that morning, his lips tightly pursed against the brilliance of his master plan. “I’ll head back to my place once I’ve finished my coffee,” he’d promised, a hand on her hip as he’d kissed her goodbye. “No reason for me to lurk around here while you’re at your spa day with the girls.”

She’d groaned aloud and, just once, thumped her head against his shoulder. “I warned them three times that I’m too fat for this,” she’d complained, and Jasper’d bit down hard on the edges of his smile. “They’re going to have to roll me in and out of the pedicure chair—unless, of course, I die of embarrassment over my specially ordered ‘pregnancy massage.’”

He’d nudged her backwards a little at that, his hands drifting from her hips to her still-swelling middle, and he’d studied her so long and hard that her cheeks’d reddened. The breeze’d rippled her shirt—one of those higher-waisted ones that proved to the whole damn world just how pregnant she was—and the warm spring sun’d turned her hair and skin all golden. He’d traced his thumb along the side of her belly before saying, “You’re gorgeous, and you know it.”

She’d smacked him in the arm with her purse. “Go drink your coffee,” she’d retorted, but she’d dragged him down for a hard, hungry kiss before she’d released him.

Instead of drinking his coffee, though, Jasper’d called his friends over to the house and dragged a couple gallons of paint—the exact paint Maria’d been eyeing for the zucchini’s room—out of the back of his car.

In all honesty, he’s pretty fucking proud of himself for orchestrating the greatest ninja room-painting of all time, and he’s not even sorry about that.

“My point,” Hunter continues, apparently unaware that nobody’s even remotely interested in this week’s unsolicited advice, “is that usually, women prefer pretty things in tiny boxes, not green paint smeared all over their boyfriend’s mates.” He shrugs and tosses himself down onto the tarp-covered bed. “I hope she’s appropriately grateful when all’s said and done.”

“For the record, I hired him out of desperation, not fondness,” Hartley informs the rest of the room. Hunter snorts and waves her off to stare at the ceiling, and she shakes her head for a second before glancing in Jasper’s direction. “Though for what it’s worth,” she adds after a beat, “I think painting this room’s putting a whole lot of carts before their horses.”

Victoria sighs. “Three days without a horse reference—”

“You’re the one who brought up our honeymoon last week, not me,” Hartley counters, and Victoria rolls her eyes as she returns to painting the east wall.

Jasper—who at this point is way too familiar with his friends’ never-ending fight about the _honeymoon horseback ride from hell_ —scowls at both of them. “You know it’s never reassuring when you do that, right?” he demands. She blinks at him, and he jabs the roller in her general direction. “Don’t play dumb. It’s the whole ‘twist Hunter’s bullshit around into a new way to poke at Jasper’ schtick, and it _sucks_.”

Hartley scoffs and tosses her head. “I do not—”

“You do,” Bobbi says as she dips her paintbrush back in her tray.

“Incessantly,” Victoria agrees.

“It’s actually charming how far you try to distance yourself from my advice before you finally agree with me,” Hunter adds from the bed. Hartley twists to glare at him, and he shrugs. “What? I take it as a compliment.”

“You’re going to take a paint roller to the face if you don’t stop talking,” she retorts, and he rolls his eyes at her as he returns to his beer. Jasper presses his lips together to hide his smirk—not because Hunter’s wrong (he’s not), but because he believes pretty strongly in a little thing called self-preservation. Lucky for him, Hartley’s too busy glowering at Hunter to notice. 

“What I’m trying to say,” she continues, “is that sweeping in to paint this room like some kind of white knight reads a lot like you’re making a serious decision without talking to your—” She pauses to frown. “Am I allowed to call her your girlfriend now?”

“Yes,” Jasper answers, and he’s not really surprised when Victoria and Bobbi chime in with the same answer—or when Hunter scoffs. 

“In that case: this whole room-painting thing reads like you’re making a serious decision without talking to your girlfriend first.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “And for the fifty-seventh time today, I have no idea what in the hell you are—”

“You’re painting this room, here, at Maria’s. Meaning that the baby’s going to live here, right?” He pauses for a second before he nods, and Hartley shrugs. “So, if the kid’s living here, are _you_ going to live here, too? Part-time, full-time, just until he’s sleeping through the night? Are you going to crash on the couch, or are you going to curl up in Maria’s bed like you’re her full-time boyfriend?”

Victoria shoves her paint-stained hands into her back pockets. “Are you even sleeping at your place at all, anymore?” she asks. “Because when we swung by last weekend, you were—”

“I sleep there weeknights, right now,” Jasper answers quickly, and he hates the way he feels like a fidgety fucking twelve-year-old when all his friends are staring at him. Worse, Hunter snorts so hard that he starts choking on his beer and needs to prop himself up on his elbow. Jasper scowls at him. “Most weeknights,” he corrects, ignoring Victoria’s smug smirk. “We’re still balancing out the whole who-stays-where thing, and since she’s the one incubating the kid—”

“So you’re still living at your place at least half-time,” Hartley cuts him off, and he grits his teeth as he nods again. “Then what does the future look like, huh? Will the kid ever live with you? When will that start? Are you going to turn your spare room into a nursery, or just hope that she’ll invite you to move in here permanently by the time he’s a year old?”

There’s an edge to Hartley’s voice, one that slices through all the layers of bullshit between them and slides straight into the softest part of Jasper’s belly, and he forces himself to shrug off the sting. “We haven’t really talked about that yet,” he admits. 

Over on the other side of the room, Bobbi spins around on her little step stool to peer right at him—and, as far as he’s concerned, deep into his damn soul. “How much of it have you talked about?” she asks, her elbows on her thighs. “Because pretty soon, you’re going to have a baby, and at that point—”

“We’ve talked about enough of it for this point in her pregnancy, okay?” Jasper interrupts, and he cringes at the clear defensiveness in his voice. The others all sort of raise their eyebrows at it, so he sighs and drags a hand over his face. “Look, this isn’t one of those situations where we both went into it with our eyes wide open about all the potential disasters,” he reminds them. “Most days, we’re still figuring out how the whole relationship part of this mess works, never mind the logistics of actually having the kid. But since he’s not showing up ‘til July, we’ve got time to work out the bugs.”

Victoria rolls her lips together thoughtfully. “It’s April, Jasper.”

“So?”

“You’ve known about this baby since the end of January, and the only plan you two have come up with so far is apparently ‘let’s clean out a room in Maria’s house and paint it green.’” Her ponytail swishes against her shoulders as she shakes her head, and Jasper works extra hard not to scowl at her and storm out of the room. “I know I’ve never been through this—”

“Thank god,” Hartley mutters.

“—but flying by the seat of your pants doesn’t exactly seem ideal.”

Jasper snorts and rolls his eyes. “Weird thing about an accidental pregnancy: nothing’s fucking _ideal_ ,” he snaps, and twists away to grab his roller.

A harsh, almost too-heavy silence settles over the room after that, and despite the sun that’s streaming in through the bare window, Jasper swears there’s a dark cloud hovering over all five of them. Even when the awkwardness breaks enough for the others to start talking again—bickering, really, because Hunter’s apparently a little too close to Bobbi’s trim work for comfort—he ignores all the noises around him and just slips into a weird kind of painting zen. The whole world narrows until it’s just him, the roller, the paint tray—and a couple dozen toxic thoughts that keep swirling around in his head, but who’s counting?

Because of course, deep down under all the defensiveness, he knows Hartley and the others are right, that he and Maria need to develop some sort of concrete plan. He’s thought about it before, laying in his own bed late at night and studying the ceiling, but by the time the sun nudges over the horizon, he’s _always_ lost his fucking nerve. This relationship with Maria, this dance that drifts between dating and something a whole lot deeper than that— Even now, two months after Thor and Jane’s wedding, it feels too fragile to touch. Like one of his ham-fisted, bull-in-the-china-shop conversations might shatter everything between them into a million pieces, and he—

He’s not stupid. He knows that he and Maria, they might not last forever. They just might be a walking fucking disaster.

But he cares about her, enough that whole other verbs pop into his head without his permission these days, and he wants to hold onto that.

He wants to nourish this fragile thing between them until he’s sure it can survive his stupid, untrustworthy tongue.

Jasper’s so wrapped up in all of that—in his own head, or his philosophy of romance, or whatever the hell you want to call it—that he totally misses the sound of a car in the driveway and a key in the front door. In fact, all five of them do, proof positive that they’re the worst private investigators, ex-cops, and high school principals in the damn world. 

Because Jasper only realizes that Maria’s in the house—in the _doorway_ to the spare room, really—when he hears her ask, “What the hell is going on in here?”

His blood runs so cold that he drops the roller and splatters his socks with green paint.

Everybody else sort of freezes, too, and for a brief second, Jasper’s able to imagine how the whole scene must look to Maria: four almost-strangers and her boyfriend in her spare room, standing on tarps and covered in paint as they put the finishing touches on the last wall (and the trim around the closet, because apparently, Hunter’s helping Bobbi). There’re beer bottles balanced on a tarp-covered box, a Hunter-shaped dent on the bed where he’d thrown himself down not long ago, and even the impeccable Victoria Hand has green paint in her hair. 

In the doorway, Maria raises her eyebrows, and Jasper swallows.

“In my defense,” he says as he wipes his hands on his jeans, “Jane, Phil, _and_ Pepper knew about this and encouraged me. I almost told Darcy, too, but the only person who’s worse about secrets is Hunter.”

Hunter snorts and starts to mutter under his breath, but Bobbi cuts him off with an elbow to the solar plexus. Jasper can’t decide whether Maria’s mouth twitches at that or whether it’s just a trick of the light.

“But since you’d picked out the paint you wanted,” he continues, walking to the door, “and since I’m pretty sure paint fumes and zucchini-sized fetuses don’t really agree with one another, I figured I’d surprise you.” He pauses just long enough to shrug. “Unless you hate it. If you hate it, this was Hartley’s idea, and I never—”

Maria rolls her eyes. “You can stop, now,” she instructs, and the only reason he shuts up is because she plants a hand on the side of his neck and kisses him. Not in any kind of dirty, grabby, hungry way, either, but smooth and sweet. Like a gift all its own, Jasper thinks, and he can’t stop himself from cupping her hip and keeping her close.

He absolutely refrains from chasing her kiss. He’s a grown man who wants his dignity intact, after all.

Her smile gleams brighter than the sunlight as she steps away, and for a couple seconds, she treats them to the Maria Hill special: she stands there, hands on her hips and her chin held high, and surveys the room like a queen double-checking on her kingdom. “I think I owe you all pizza,” she finally decides, her voice warm and easy. “Also, more beer than you can realistically drink tonight, but we can at least start with pizza.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate our ability to drink you out of house and home,” Hunter informs her, and he swears as Bobbi elbows him _again_.

Hovering near the unfinished wall, Hartley sighs. “I hate to admit this, but he’s right.”

Maria grins. “Put together a list of your demands while I go change,” she says, and she runs her hand down the side of Jasper’s arm before she disappears down the hall.

Hunter at least waits for Maria’s bedroom door to close before commenting, “I think I might actually like your girlfriend, mate.”

Jasper rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Hunter,” he and Hartley both grumble. The only difference is, unlike Hartley, Jasper can’t stop smiling.

 

==

 

“The more I think about it, the more I think people are going to talk,” Jasper says a couple days later, and Maria rolls her eyes as she reaches for her soda. “No, listen, I’m serious about this. Everybody who’s walked by in the last ten minutes is probably thinking, ‘There’s Hill, buttering up Sitwell with lunch again. Is she paying him for his quality baby-making services? Is she trying to woo him with gyros and crinkle-cut fries?’”

Maria tilts her head to one side, her eyebrows rising. “You mean you’re not already wooed?”

“How many more free sandwiches do I get for saying no?” he asks, innocent as anything, and she wrinkles her nose before stealing a couple more of his fries.

The usual dull roar of the district attorney’s office during lunch is, for once, a meek little murmur that hardly carries all the way to the reception desk, and Jasper feels pretty safe flashing Maria a thousand-watt grin. They’re tied to the phones thanks to Eleanor-the-receptionist’s germ-infested hell beasts (her words, quoted from the e-mail she’d sent to Jasper that morning), but for the first time in what feels like ages, Jasper’s not trying to multitask eighteen different projects at once. There are no subpoenas to sort through, no teenage runaways to pin down, no sneaky missing witnesses to sniff out like one of those Belgian pigs who root around for truffles. Instead, he’s able to just enjoy lunch with Maria, her jacket slung over the back of her chair and her sleeves rolled up as she slathers the last of her tzatziki on her gyro. 

A couple wispy strands of hair, all wavy and windswept, slip out of her bun as she leans forward, and Jasper’s struck (again, as usual, whatever) by just how gorgeous she is in moments like this, when she’s all open and unguarded. When she’s purely Maria, no masks and no bullshit, and Jasper counts himself lucky that she allows him these glimpses at all.

He’s apparently glimpsing too hard at her, though, because she frowns as she thumbs sauce off the corner of her mouth. “What?” she demands.

He blinks and drops his eyes back to his own pita. “Nothing.”

“No, not _nothing_ , you were gaping at me.” He snorts, and Maria crosses her arms over her chest. “Is there something in my teeth that I need to know about? I don’t think I dropped food on my shirt again, but if I did—” 

She ducks her head to check—the belly, according to her, is like a giant target for all kinds of drips and dribbles, and she’s threatened three times to buy stock in those stain-removing sticks they advertise on TV all the time—but Jasper just sighs. “I was maybe, I don’t know, admiring you,” he admits, and he feels like a teenager owning up to a crush. “A little. Nothing to write home about.”

He braces himself for a brush-off, one of those practiced Maria Hill dismissals that he’s spent a good six months steeling himself against, but when he glances at her, she’s smiling. A tiny smile, the kind that nudges at the corners of her mouth and brightens her eyes, and she clears her throat before she wipes it away. “Trust me when I say there is nothing here to admire,” she says.

Jasper shrugs. “Depends on who you’re asking,” he replies casually, and she nudges her foot against his ankle as they both return to their lunch.

They chat lazily about shit that hardly matters, after that—Maria mentions a couple of her upcoming cases, Jasper rattles through his to-do list, that sort of crap—until they’re slurping up the watery remnants of their sodas and poking half-heartedly the last shriveled bits of Jasper’s fries. Maria usually rushes away after lunch—because the life of the Chief Assistant District Attorney isn’t complete without thirty-seven unfinished tasks waiting for her on her desk—but she lingers this time, her foot still pressed up against his. 

Finally, after a longer silence than usual, she settles her paper cup on the counter. “I need to go look at baby crap this weekend,” she says, not quite meeting his eyes. “I tried to just price it all online, but I think something like this, I maybe need to see it in person. Figure out all the moving parts—probably literally, because car seats are nothing like they were when I babysat fifteen years ago.” 

Jasper frowns slightly. “I thought you said Jane might lend you some of Astrid’s crap.”

“Yeah, I have a sneaking suspicion that Jane might actually need it.” For a split second, they stare at each other—him blinking, her with a cocked eyebrow—until all the pieces fall together and Jasper laughs so hard that he chokes on air. Maria slugs him in the shoulder. “You didn’t hear it from me,” she warns.

He raises his hands. “The field day Stark’s going to have with this is reward enough to— Ow, okay, I didn’t hear it from you!” Maria tilts her head like she’s tempted to slug him a third time. He catches her hand in both of his and holds on until she half-reluctantly links their fingers together. “So you need baby stuff,” he says after a couple seconds.

She nods. “Right. Maybe Saturday morning, after the initial morning rush?” Jasper feels his brow tighten slightly, and she sighs just hard enough to blow the loose hair out of her face. “I’d promise the afternoon, but Phil wants to do our monthly case audit early and I know if I turn him down, he’ll get all—” 

“My Saturday’s totally free,” Jasper cuts her off. She rolls her lips together, almost like she’s embarrassed, and he squeezes her hand. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re equal partners in this whole ‘adventures in zucchini cultivation’ thing, and if you want me around while you pick out furniture, the least I can do is—”

“I finally got through to Fandral,” a voice interrupts suddenly, and they both jerk their heads up to discover that Peggy’s literally hanging around the corner. She panting slightly, almost like she ran the whole way from her desk. “He’s travelling for the whole rest of the month, so if you want to talk to him about this plea deal, I think—”

“I’m coming,” Maria agrees as she stands, nodding curtly. Within seconds, she’s swept her lunch debris into the nearest can and slung her jacket over her shoulder, the very picture of the modern professional woman. Jasper almost teases her about that very thing, but then she hesitates slightly, her lips pursing together into a hard little frown. “Saturday,” she says, and plants one hand on his shoulder as she leans down to kiss him.

It’s just a peck, a quick-and-dirty office goodbye, but it feels like something bigger than that, too. Jasper touches her arm once, just for a second, before she’s gone.

He’s about to swivel back toward the computer when he realizes that Peggy’s still standing at the end of the reception desk, her hands planted on her hips and a wicked grin on her face. He rolls his eyes. “Whatever you’re going to say, you might as well say it,” he informs her.

Peggy shrugs. “Aren’t I allowed to be happy for my friend?” she asks. 

“Knowing how you and the other Stepford Sisters think, no,” he retorts, and she laughs as heads back down the hallway. He waves off the tittering end to her laughter, but like it or not, he keeps grinning, too.

At least, for about forty minutes.

In his defense, he’s playing Solitaire when the two men wander into the waiting room, and he’s just distracted enough that he hardly registers that the door’s opened until it closes behind them. They’re both tall and dark-haired and wear jeans and slightly unkempt polo shirts, almost like they’ve just stepped off the city bus. Jasper actually assumes that they’re petty criminals, the kind that Barnes regularly strong-arms into diversions. Like the kind of middle-aged assholes who maybe drove a golf cart into a water hazard after shooting a double-bogey or some other sort of drunk white guy bullshit.

Except they look familiar, too. Well, not familiar, exactly, but like they’re related to one another, cousins or half-brothers who grew up thick as thieves. They wear their hair the same, they boast the same solid jaw line, and when they glance around the waiting room, they each flash a worried, furrowed-brow frown at the other. The second one, the scrawnier of the two, shoves his hands in his pockets; the first checks his watch like he’s expecting somebody.

And like a dumbass, Jasper smiles at the both of them. “Can I help you?”

The second one, hands-in-pockets, immediately starts studying the _How to Prevent Home Invasions_ poster on the far wall, but the other flashes Jasper a polite almost-grin. “Sorry, we’re a little disoriented. I swear the place changes every time we stop by.”

“We hear that a lot,” Jasper lies, because nobody in the history of the universe’s ever said that about the district attorney’s office. “What can I do for you?”

The guy leans against the reception counter. “We’re looking for Maria Hill.”

He delivers the line totally straight, as deadpan as a pizza guy showing up with your dinner— _got a large double-pepperoni, extra cheese here_ —and as much as Jasper tries to clamp down on his surprise, he _still_ chokes on the air like he’s just now learning how to breathe properly. The guy’s grin fades right away, his eyebrows rising in a way that’s vaguely familiar, and Jasper—

Jasper reminds himself that Maria’s a rational adult woman with a gun license and no need for his stupid, lizard-brain protective instinct. 

(Just for the record, the reminder fails.)

“There a problem?” the guy asks, and Jasper realizes all at once that he’s spent the last five or ten seconds just staring at this stranger in the green polo shirt. He shuts his mouth and swallows, but the guy leans closer to the glass. “Because I don’t why you’re staring, but where I come from—”

“Ed, don’t be an asshole,” the second guy suddenly breaks in, a hand landing on his buddy’s broad shoulder. Ed rolls his eyes, but he backs up a couple inches, and all of a sudden, Jasper recognizes why these guys are so familiar, why he feels like he _knows_ their brown eyes and the shapes of their noses and the way their faces shift with they smile. “What my brother means to say,” the second guy continues, almost as though Jasper’s not gaping at them, “is that we came in to surprise Maria. She doesn’t know we’re here, but we’re—”

“Her brothers,” Jasper finishes for him.

And Carl Hill’s grin reminds Jasper so much of Maria’s that for a second, he wants to beat his head into the nearest flat surface. “Exactly. Would you mind letting her know we’re here?”

 

==

 

“No, Ed, you _don’t_ have a proprietary right to show up here unannounced, but I appreciate that you’re a big enough asshole to think—”

The end of Maria’s sentence—her tirade, really, part three of about six so far—is lost to the rattle of the refrigerator door slamming, and in the living room, Jasper stares down at his beer. He’s the last man standing at the end of the world’s most awkward dinner, an idiot armed with a beer bottle and not much else to show for himself, but every time he’d tried to escape, Maria’d shaken her head at him. “Stay,” she’d instructed, her voice hard as she’d collected their dessert plates. “The boys will help me clean up—”

“We’re still the boys?” Ed’d asked, his grin flinty and entirely unfriendly.

“—and then they’ll head back to the hotel.” She’d cast a sharp glance at both of her brothers. “And they’ll go sight-seeing for the rest of their time here, because I’m certainly not entertaining them.”

Carl’d at least dropped his eyes down to his empty plate, but Ed—easily the louder of the two, the kind of brother Jasper’d tried to be back grade school (before his mother’d boxed his ears and threatened him with a lifetime of grounding if he didn’t shape up)—had snorted derisively. “You really expect to leave us to our own devices?” he’d asked.

“I hear there’s a nice bus tour around the historic part of town if you get lonely,” Maria’d replied with a tiny shrug, and Jasper’d actually flinched as Ed’d stomped into the kitchen after her.

The kitchen’s silent now—or at least, quiet enough that Jasper can’t hear anything through the door—and he knocks back the rest of his beer before he drags himself off the couch. He wants to stick around for a while longer, be a friendly face for Maria when she’s done fighting off her brothers, but he feels— Conspicuous? No, maybe not conspicuous, just out of place. Like when you buy a new lamp or picture for your living room and keep shuffling it around. Yeah, sure, it matches your color scheme, and you’re definitely not returning it to the store any time soon, but you’re still not sure where the damn thing _fits_.

Except the longer he draws out that comparison, the more his beer and the pizza they’d all eaten churns into this big brick of dread in his stomach. He swallows around it, plasters on a fake smile, and raises his hand to knock on the kitchen door.

At least, until Ed snorts like a pissed off show horse. “You can get your feminist panties in a wad if you want, Maria, but you’re missing my point,” he growls, and despite himself, Jasper drops his hand away from the door. “Because here’s the thing: when my kid sister up and decides—”

“Decides?” Maria demands. A drawer rattles shut, and Jasper imagines her twisting to glare at her brother, her whole body tight. “Ignoring your ‘feminist panties’ comment—which we will come back to, by the way—I’d like to remind you that the definition of ‘accidental pregnancy’ is the fact that nobody _decided_ anything.”

“And like I was saying, when my sister decides to have a baby with a random guy off the street, I am allowed to be concerned.” 

There’s something sharp edging into Ed’s tone, something _angry_ , but Maria just huffs out one of her dismissive little half-laughs. “Concerned? Ed, do you actually think this is what concern looks like? Because from here, you look like a meat-headed jackass who just wants to—”

“Maria.” 

Unlike his brother, Carl keeps his voice calm and even, and Maria immediately falls quiet. For a few seconds, all Jasper’s able to hear are footfalls, and he presses his back to the wall next to the door, willing the steps to stay inside the kitchen. He considers beating a retreat—hiding back in the living room with his empty beer, running out of the house and into his car—but for some reason, Carl’s gentle sigh pins him to the spot. He imagines the younger Hill brother running his fingers through his hair or shaking his head like his sister might.

“We’re worried about you,” Carl says. “Don’t you understand that? Ed, me, even Dad. We just want to be sure that you’re okay with everything that’s going on in your life. That you don’t need help getting through this.”

Maria snorts. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“No,” Carl agrees, “but you’re still our kid sister.”

“And pretty fucking awful at decision-making,” Ed grumbles.

There’s a half-second scuffle—a stomped foot, the sound of a hand hitting the countertop, something rougher than just a conversation—but the sharp whip-crack of Carl’s _Ed!_ stops all the noises in their tracks. Jasper thinks he catches a few seconds of heavy breathing, but he’s not totally sure. When he hears Ed mutter an apology, he’s sure he’s hallucinating.

Either way, though, Carl releases another tired little sigh. “Are you really okay?” he asks, and for the first time all night, Jasper hears a kind of brotherly concern seeping into his tone. “How about your— I don’t know what I should call Jasper. Your boyfriend?”

“He—” Maria starts, but her voice falters, suddenly hesitant. Jasper’s gut twists, a reminder of all those uncertain nights from before their long talk at Thor and Jane’s wedding—from before they’d decided to become _something_ , a sum bigger than their parts—and the twist only tightens when Maria finally answers, “Something like that, yeah.”

“Okay,” Carl says, almost as though Maria’d never hesitated at all. “Your boyfriend, Jasper. Is he treating you okay? Is he dealing with the baby situation okay? Because if Annette dropped this on me, I don’t know if I—”

“Oh, _please_ don’t compare Jasper to your pearl-clutching puritan wife,” Maria immediately snipes, and Jasper barely manages to cover his mouth before a snort of laughter bubbles out of him. Ed, on the other hand, laughs aloud, this braying guffaw that carries right out of the kitchen—and that Maria promptly ignores. “Jasper is the gold standard of what a guy who accidentally gets his almost-girlfriend pregnant should be,” she continues, and for the first time all night, Jasper’s lungs unclench. “He’s supportive, he’s _kind_ , he’s there ten seconds before I even think I need him. If I didn’t know better, I would say that he’s waited his entire life to flex these muscles. I’m just lucky somebody else didn’t get here first.”

Something about her voice—maybe the warmth, maybe the honesty, maybe just the gentle cadence that Jasper’s come to recognize as a constant, a weird sort of tide in his own life—settles into the softest part of Jasper’s chest, and finally, he smiles. He feels like he’s spent the last couple hours standing on that smile, hiding it behind all the stilted questions and answers over the pizza and chocolate cake Maria’d ordered them all for dinner, and without that tension, his whole body unknots. He steps away from the wall and decides in that instant that he’ll trot back to the couch and read some shitty magazine until Maria and her brothers stop arguing, be the guy Maria expects out of him: somebody she deserves, who takes care of her and the zucchini without eavesdropping or comparing himself to a freaking table lamp. 

He’s not conspicuous, he reminds himself. He’s Maria’s freaking gold standard.

But then, Ed snorts and says, “Except Jasper’s no Mark, now is he?”

And ice water floods Jasper’s veins.

He pauses there, halfway in front of the door, torn between walking away and sticking around, listening to the next part of the conversation. He’s still not sure about which way to go, either, when Maria heaves a sigh. “Ed—”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Ed presses, “he seems okay. Decent, you know? And you said he’s, what, a cop?”

“A former detective, yeah,” Maria answers.

Ed huffs out a breath. “Yeah, okay. An ex-cop, then. But whatever he is, can be _really_ keep up with you? Take care of you the way you deserve?” 

The silence that sweeps in to replace the question is deafening—devastating, even—and Jasper only discovers that he’s back against the wall, his shoulders pressed hard against the plasterboard, when he hears Ed draw in a long breath. 

“The second you figured out how to walk,” he continues, his footfalls heavy as he moves around the kitchen, “you started running. You had a laundry list of shit you wanted to accomplish by the time you were thirty, and let me tell you: no guy you dated even knew what to do with that list except for Mark. He’s the only one who looked at your ambitions and said, ‘Here’s the leg up you wanted, let me boost you over that ledge.’” He pauses for a second, the last word rattling like an echo in the back of Jasper’s head, and Jasper imagines him running a hand down Maria’s arm, soothing his kid sister through his fucked-up pep talk. “You really think an ex-cop’s able to give you all that? Never mind the baby, but _you_.”

There’s another pause there, longer than the last, before Maria snorts dismissively. Somebody slams the dishwasher shut, all the silverware jangling, and Jasper pictures her pacing away from her brother, maybe throwing up her hands. “Not to rain on your parade,” she says after a moment, “but Mark left me.”

“Yeah, and in case you forgot: he regretted it.” The words hit Jasper like a physical blow, almost knocking the wind right out of him, but Ed just huffs out another, almost disbelieving breath. “Mark never wanted to divorce you, and my guess is, you haven’t really forgotten that part. Oh, you like riding high on your ‘all men must die’ bullshit and ignoring the fact that he wanted you back, but at the end of the day, you know better. You know he _begged_ you to take him back. Hell, Maria, he got the whole family involved, patched things up with us before—”

“Patching things up with my brothers is not the same as _not_ cheating, Ed! And it’s not the same as _not_ leaving me right before the bar exam, either!” 

There’s anger in Maria’s voice this time, flinty and cold, and Jasper closes his eyes as he listens to it, as he imagines her turning on her brother and jabbing a finger into his puffed-out chest. “Excuse me for not believing in your hyper-masculine bullshit,” she presses, “but just because a man apologizes does not earn him the right to—”

“So you’re willing to spend your life running around with an ex-cop, then? That what you’re saying?” Maria’s words drop away, replaced by a sharp silence, and for the first time since they all trudged into the kitchen together, Ed sighs. It’s a long, soft sound, like he’s disappointed in something—in someone, Jasper thinks, and his heart drops into his stomach—and when it dissipates, it’s replaced by near-complete silence. 

“You want to pick some soft around the middle guy over everything else you could have?” Ed asks after a few more seconds, and Jasper presses his lips into a tight line in hopes of keeping his fucking mouth shut. “Because if you don’t want Mark, that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be Mark. But trust me when I say, you can do a _whole_ lot better than Jasper.”

Jasper’s pretty sure Carl snaps at him then, cuts him off before the conversation drags on too much further—or, worse, jumps right back into a vicious argument—but to be fair, Jasper’s not really listening. No, by the time Carl starts talking, Jasper’s already stepping away from the door and walking down the hallway, his empty beer bottle still clutched in his hand and his arm shaking so bad, he’s sure he’ll shatter the thing in his damn grip. He walks into the bathroom, shuts the door behind him, and spends a minute just standing there, surrounded by dark, his whole body inches away from trembling apart at the seams.

Because sure, okay, the fact that Maria’s brother thinks he’s some sack of shit washed up cop? That stings. That’s like lemon juice in a knife wound when you’re cooking, like sour candy up against a still-healing cold sore. He’s okay with that sort of sting.

But the fact Maria stayed quiet in the face of all that? 

He drops his empty into the trash and grips the vanity instead, his fingers curling against the stone because _that_? That silence? That’s the one that hollows him out and leaves him bleeding on the side of the fucking road.

By the time he drags himself out of the bathroom a couple minutes later, the house is as peaceful as every other day of the week, and he’s only half surprised to discover Maria standing out on her front porch, staring into the dark of an April night. He wanders up behind her with his hands in his pockets, totally at a loss for words; from the way her mouth hardly twitches, he’s pretty sure she’s grasping at the same sort of straws. Still, she leans her weight against him when he walks up next to her, and his hand still fits pretty perfectly right where her hip spreads into the weight of their baby.

The weight of a kid her brother wishes belonged to somebody else, Jasper thinks, and his stomach sours so hard that he thinks he might retch.

They linger in the spring breeze for a long time, his face tipping into her hair and breathing in the scent of her shampoo like he’s not fighting against the dull ache in the center of his chest, but after a few minutes, Maria sighs. “Am I the worst girlfriend ever if I ask to spend tonight alone?” she asks softly. 

Jasper swears his heart stops, never mind the rest of his body, but he’s not sure he’s gone all still and stiff until Maria steps away from him. She brushes loose hair out of her face before meeting his eyes. “I don’t know how much of that debacle with my brothers you heard,” she says, “but I just need to take a long bath and go to bed. And I know I could do that with you here, but after everything they said, I . . . ”

“You need a little distance?” he asks, and she rolls her lips together guiltily. For a couple seconds, they just stare at one another, separated by a couple feet of worn-out porch slats and the whisper of the cool April wind. 

Finally, though, Jasper—gold standard or sucker, take your pick—plasters on his best smile. “You take as much time as you need to screw your head back on after that nightmare,” he says, and twists his fingers in her sleeve to tug her closer. She rolls her eyes a little, but she also falls right into his arms, their bodies (belly and all) slotting together like they belong that way. He presses a kiss against her temple and buries his face in her hair. “You take good care of the zucchini,” he says, “and I’ll see the both of you in the morning.”

Maria snorts against his neck. “You know it’d actually be _bad_ to see the zucchini tomorrow, right?”

“I bet even money he knows what I mean,” Jasper replies, and he trails his fingers over the curve of her stomach before finally, reluctantly, letting her go.

 

==

 

Jasper hardly sleeps that night or the next, when Maria’s brothers invite her out for what she swears up and down is an apology dinner and he’s left alone with his own, rattling thoughts.

And if he’s surprised when, Saturday morning, Maria texts him to reschedule their shopping plans—

Well, you can’t surprise somebody who’s braced himself against the worst case scenario, now can you?

 

==

 

When Maria walks into her office Monday morning, her grin as bright as the sunlight that’s streaming in from outside, Jasper’s staring at her calendar.

He’s not proud of himself, not really, but when he’d circled her desk to leave a latte and a pastry in front of her keyboard, he’d caught sight of her open planner out of the corner of his eye. The planner first, then a name written in bold red ink, and now—

Now he’s still staring, frowning, trying to wrap his head around the first Saturday in May while Maria stops short in her doorway. “Jasper?” she asks, and all the brightness drains right out of her voice. She sounds worried, and his brow furrows. “Are you okay? What are you—”

“Why are you having dinner with your ex-husband next weekend?” he asks, raising his head. Maria freezes, her hands out in front of her like she plans on reaching for him, and that’s how he’ll always remember the moment: the two of them, staring across the office in the silence, Maria’s eyes widening slightly. He swallows. “Because unless I’m misreading your calendar, it says you’re having dinner with Mark, at eight, next Saturday night.”

She purses her lips. “Jasper—”

“Why the fuck are you having dinner with him, Maria?” he snaps, and he’s not sure what hurts worse: the way the color drains right from her face, or the way she glances away from him. 

For the first time since the awful fucking dinner on Thursday night—a dinner that still curdles his blood as his fingers press hard against the surface of Maria’s desk—Jasper’d woken up that morning feeling like maybe he could still salvage the last remaining shreds of his dignity. He’d discussed (obsessed over) the whole debacle at dinner with Rhodes Sunday night, a distraction that’d stopped being distracting the minute the guy’d tipped his head to one side and asked, “Okay, what the hell is wrong with you tonight?” Jasper’d dumped his heart out on the table between their appetizer and main course, and by the end of it, Rhodes’d just laughed at him.

“I’m sorry, because I know this is not the response you want,” he’d said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes while Jasper’d glared, “but come on. Don’t you know how brothers are?”

“I am a brother, thanks,” Jasper’d growled.

“Yeah, but your parents raised you different.” Rhodes’d sighed and shaken his head. “Take it from a guy whose girlfriend also grew up in a military household with two brothers: the whole ‘overprotective S.O.B.’ routine isn’t just an act, it’s a way of life.” Jasper’d rolled his eyes, and Rhodes’d leaned his arms on the table. “You want my two cents?”

“No.”

“Well, too bad, because here they are: the way Maria’s brothers feel about you has nothing to do with the way _she_ feels about you.” He’d tipped his beer toward Jasper, a poor man’s punctuation mark, and Jasper’d snorted at him as he’d looked away. “The sooner you separate out the two things, the happier you’ll be.”

The waitress’d swung by just then, sweeping away their bread plates and promising that their dishes were mere moments away, and Jasper’d seized the opportunity to run a hand over his stubble. “She didn’t defend me,” he’d pointed out once he and Rhodes were alone again. “She didn’t tear them a new one for saying those things.”

Rhodes’d rolled his eyes. “A whole lifetime of three little siblings and a mom like a freight train, and you’re telling me you never learned to choose your battles?” he’d asked, and that’d ended the conversation all together.

Rhodes’s advice had followed Jasper around all morning—in and out of the shower, around his bedroom, even through his usual morning routine of checking the weather, his e-mail, and the _pregnancy progress_ website he absolutely had not bookmarked—and by the time he’d left the house, he’d decided to just start over. To drop all the bad feelings like a hot potato and focus on all the good things about his relationship with Maria: their conversations, their laughter, the green-painted room waiting for its occupant. Her asshole brothers, he’d decided, didn’t matter. What mattered was the two of them and this thing they kept on building, brick by brick.

He’d stopped for coffee and pastries, a little gift for Maria. He’d fucking _whistled_ as he’d strolled down to her office.

And then, as he’d waited for Maria to return from her meeting from Fury, he’d caught sight of her calendar.

Maria hesitates, now, her lips pursed and her face ghostly white, and Jasper swallows around the ire that threatens to burble up in the back of his throat. No, not just ire, because that implies anger. No, what brews just under the surface is pure, unadulterated hurt, and he swears he can feel his whole body trembling as he draws in a breath.

Across the office, Maria wets her lips. “I guess I know how much of that conversation you overheard from the living room,” she says tightly.

Jasper snorts. “Yeah, because _that_ is the problem right now,” he returns, and he’s surprised by how little guilt he feels when she flinches. “I was actually ready to let all that go, but since you brought it up—”

“Look, I know what you’re probably thinking,” she cuts in, raising her hand slightly, “but it is not—”

“It’s not what, Maria? You scheduling dinner with your ex-husband three days after your brothers decide I’m not worth your time?” She cringes, her whole face tightening, and Jasper shakes his head. “You know, it figures,” he says, the words escaping in a hard huff of breath. “I finally get to the point where I don’t have to defend you to Hartley and everybody else anymore, and it turns out that they’re actually right.”

For one, heart-stopping half-second, something soft and unrecognizable flickers across Maria’s face. It’s not hurt, but something rougher—something that causes her to curl her fingers around the back of one of the chairs in front of her desk, her fingernails biting into the upholstery—but before Jasper’s able to pin a name to it, the expression’s gone. Maria’s whole face hardens after that, her jaw clenching and her shoulders squaring under her jacket, and he knows without a second thought that he’s now facing the chief assistant district attorney.

He almost laughs at the irony—that after all this time, he’s not even allowed to fight with his own fucking girlfriend—but Maria beats him to the punch. “If you would just listen to me,” she says, her voice cool and even, “I can explain what’s actually happening, and we can—”

“You want to know what’s happening?” Jasper interrupts sharply. A little flutter of irritation flashes across her face, and he actually snorts out a rough laugh as he throws up his hands. “Fuck, Maria, I can tell you exactly what’s happening here. It’s that every time I think we’re getting somewhere, you remind me _exactly_ where I stand.” She jerks a little at that, her lips parting slightly, and he shakes his head. “You don’t even realize you fucking do it, do you? You don’t even realize that every time I think we’re finally over that hump—that we could be something great, that I could maybe be in love with you—you do this to me. You decide you don’t want to reevaluate, you don’t talk to me for a month, you fucking flinch away or you don’t defend me to your asshole brothers or you schedule dinner with your ex-husband, and I—” 

The words catch without his permission, suddenly sticky in the back of his throat, and he pauses to pinch the bridge of his nose and breathe again. Still on the other side of the desk, still gripping the back of the chair, Maria stares at him, her eyes wide and her face pale. Pale as porcelain, glowing in the sunlight like when they’d spent the weekend in October, and for some reason, Jasper suddenly wants to throw something at the memory.

To release all of his helplessness, his stupidity, in one fell swoop.

Maria draws in a breath, but Jasper’s the one who exhales hard and shakes his head again. “I care about you so much,” he says quietly, “that it’s like this hole opens up inside of me sometimes, but you don’t even know what you want. We’ve got a kid coming, sure, and that’s set in stone at this point, but otherwise? I really don’t think you have any idea what you’re doing. What _we’re_ doing.”

A long, silent moment sweeps in between them, one that’s hardly broken by the sound of Phil and Clint wandering down the hallway outside Maria’s office, or Phil opening his own office door. He pauses in the doorway to peer across the hall—from the way Maria’s door is halfway closed, he can probably see most of the scene, from her tight shoulders to Jasper’s throat working while he swallows—but at least the guy is sensible enough to leave them alone and shut his own door behind him.

Finally, Maria shakes her head. “Nothing you just said has anything to do with Mark,” she says, her voice almost a murmur. “You and I, what’s between us, it has _nothing_ to do with—”

“But you don’t know, do you?” he asks. She rolls her lips together, her eyes dropping down to the floor, and Jasper— Jasper’s surprised that he’s able to stand up straight, the way his breath shakes when he finally exhales. “I probably should’ve guessed when you let your brothers railroad me, but still, it’s kind of nice to know the truth. Something that’s not bullshit, for once.”

He steps away from Maria’s desk, then, away from the coffee and pastry he brought her and the happy collection of snapshots pinned to the corkboard along the one wall—her and some of her gal pals, her with the grooms at Clint and Phil’s wedding, the latest of the sonogram pictures. There are no pictures of him, he realizes after a split second, and that’s the force that propels him hard toward the doorway. He’s so caught up in his own thoughts, in his own fucked up self-pity, that he only hears Maria calling his name after she catches him by the wrist, and even then, he almost jumps out of his skin.

Her hand’s soft and warm. He hardens himself against the urge to twine his fingers in hers before he glances over his shoulder at her. 

“This isn’t what you think it is,” she says, and guilt curls in his belly when he realizes her eyes are damp. “And if you can give me ten minutes to explain, then I—”

“Not right now,” he tells her honestly, and she purses her lips into a tight line before she nods. The motion’s so jerky, so uncertain, that he almost reaches for her. Almost pulls her into a hug she hardly deserves, he thinks to himself, so he shakes off the thought like a cobweb. “Maria, right now, I need my own version of distance. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, and he nods a little in return.

And if he touches her middle before he walks out—just the once, just the tap of a couple fingertips, just the desperate touch of a guy who’d gladly reach out, even in the middle of this hell, for so much more—neither of them say a word about it.


	9. May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In May, Maria’s forced to own up to her mistakes and her fears. Most of the mistakes are ripples carrying over from the past, things she should have done weeks or years earlier but never bothered fixing. The fears, on the other hand, are huge and crippling—and remind her that she’s two months away from being somebody’s mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, even if the latter did leave me stranded in an airport for two hours this morning.

“I took the liberty of ordering a bottle of that red you like,” Mark says as Maria approaches the table, his attention totally glued to the menu that he probably knows by heart. “I know you always complain about how expensive it is, but since you’ll drink most of it, I thought I’d cut out the middle man and—”

His eyes—just his eyes—lift for a split second, a reflex more than anything else, and when he blinks, they widen so far that the whites glow in the restaurant’s relative dark. The waiter pulls out Maria’s chair for her, and she smiles politely as she sits down, well aware that her dress leaves absolutely nothing to Mark’s imagination. In fact, she’d picked it special for the occasion.

“I’ll just have water,” she tells the waiter, and he nods as he bustles away.

Mark clamps his gaping mouth shut and swallows audibly. “This is a surprise,” he says, his tone fake-bland.

Maria’s lips twitch without her permission. “I guess Ed doesn’t tell you _everything_ , then,” she replies, and opens her menu.

Even now, more than a decade after she first met Mark Trainor—freshmen in the same orientation group, a college love story cliché—Maria still pictures him as the boy in the ugly knitted pullovers, the wannabe adult who’d once lounged on a blanket in the quad and held court with his friends. In those days, he’d discussed philosophy, literature, religion, even business like a sage on high, a not-quite-adult who might someday own the world. There’s still hints of that boy in the man in front of her—his hair still curls in the wrong direction, his fingernails are still jagged from where he bites them—but for the most part, Mark’s someone wholly different now, an alternate-reality version of the know-it-all who charmed her all those years ago. Instead of a pullover and frayed jeans, he wears the expensive suit of a “personal investment professional” and talks wistfully to whoever listens about his lost youth as an artist— _you know, if things were different, I would’ve liked to something, add beauty to the world_ —while mocking people who actually try to pursue those same dreams. His awe of the rule of law—of justice—has dimmed, too, leaving him the kind of person who rolls his eyes the second anyone mentions a lawyer. She remembers their last dinner together, the way he’d heaved a sigh as he’d muttered, _And then, I had to go talk to legal_ —as if a discussion with his legal department amounted to a punishment from a pissed-off lunch lady back in elementary school.

Whoever Mark is now, Maria reminds herself, he’s not the man who she first fell in love with—or the man she married, or the man she finally divorced.

She studies her menu as the waiter delivers her water, her stomach twisting itself in knots the whole time, and she thanks him quietly before helping herself to a sip. Across the table, Mark drops his eyes back to menu, a sure sign he’s spent the last few minutes staring openly.

“If you’re going to ask, ask,” she says as she sets her glass down.

Mark jerks as though someone’s poked him in the ribs with a fork. “I don’t—”

Maria rolls her eyes. “Ed obviously forgot to tell you that I’m pregnant,” she interrupts, and he rolls his lips together instead of answering. “You’re probably full of questions about this development—and I expect the first dozen or so have to do with why Ed left this out of his monthly reports.”

He huffs out a hard breath. “Ed doesn’t give me—” he starts, but Maria levels him a tight glare. He runs a jagged nail against the outer edge of his menu for a moment before he sighs. “He asked if I’d see you while I was in town,” he finally says. “When I told him we’d planned on dinner, he said he’d let you pass on your ‘news’ yourself. I just assumed you were running for office.”

Maria barely bites back an audible groan. “Why is that the first thing people assume about me?”

“Because you’re ambitious?” When she flicks him another hard look, Mark raises his hands. “It’s a compliment, I swear.”

“First compliment you’ve paid me in about a decade,” she retorts, and lucky for her—well, really, lucky for Mark—the waiter arrives at their table with the promised bottle of wine.

He rattles through all the usual, mind-numbing wine information—everything from the year to how many bottles the winery produced and sold, information meant to titillate rich people into spending top dollar for fermented grape juice—and Maria glances away, unwilling to even fake politeness. The restaurant’s actually an old church, converted into the kind of dimly lit, fake-intimate venue that Mark only developed a taste for after he developed his first stock portfolio, and candles on every table illuminate the faces of a few dozen happy strangers. Mostly couples, Maria realizes, and her chest constricts slightly at the thought. She’s texted Jasper a dozen times in the last week—maybe more, if she’s honest—and all she’s received in return are read receipts and radio silence. She deserves that, she supposes, but she’s not sure she also deserves the weird dagger-to-the-heart feeling that comes with it.

She forces herself to study her menu, her water, the tablecloth— Anything, really, that isn’t the room full of strangers or her still-staring ex-husband. The squash ( _Sam the squash?_ she’d suggested in one of her text messages) shifts and stretches, and she touches her stomach without really thinking about it.

Mark chokes on a mouthful of wine. Subtly, sure, but Maria smirks anyway. He wipes his mouth with his napkin before closing his menu. “So,” he says, shifting in his seat slightly, “you’re pregnant.”

“I’m glad you noticed.”

He shoots her a sharp little glance, and she shrugs. “Is it—” He pauses, suddenly hesitant, and Maria resists her urge to roll her eyes again. He runs his fingers along the stem of his wine glass, his face considerate. “Did you plan this?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Is that really your first question?”

“What other question am I supposed to ask?” he fires back sharply, and Maria rolls her lips together. The men at the next table—possibly a couple, maybe business partners—glance over, and Mark makes a big show of clearing his throat and straightening his tie. Like you’d expect from a stuck-up businessman on the verge of causing a scene, Maria thinks to herself, and she hides her distaste by smiling at the strangers. Mark sips his wine before saying, slightly more calmly, “I don’t know where I’m supposed to start. Especially since you never wanted kids when we were together.”

“You’re right. I didn’t.” His eyes narrow at that, and she raises her hands. “Did you want me to lie? Tell you I always wanted to have your babies but the timing was just wrong? Because even if I could somehow say it with a straight face, you wouldn’t have believed me.” Mark snorts at her, this derisive little sound that reminds her of every one of their worst fights—a flashback of sorts to all the disdain he’d harbored for her, right up to the end—and she clenches her jaw. “But because your pride requires you to beat around the bush for a half-hour before just asking,” she presses, “no, I didn’t plan this. I didn’t go to a sperm bank—or ask Phil, before you go down that terrifying road. I’m due in July, it’s a boy, and I really have no other desire to discuss it with you beyond _any_ of those points. Good enough?”

Mark studies her for a moment, his brow tight like he’s a half-second away from a question. She waits for the inevitable needling—the same sort of mock-cheer he saves for when she mentions a victory in court—but instead, he just smiles at her. “Congratulations,” he says, and when she blinks at the sincerity in his voice, he laughs. “What? Can’t I be happy for you? I think this might be the first time in recorded history you’ve actually embraced something you _didn’t_ plan. It’s like you’re growing as a person.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re an asshole,” she reminds him, but she smiles a little, too.

At least, until he asks, “So, where’s the dad?”

She’s already back to her menu at that point, studying the list of too-small dishes as though she won’t need to stop for a burger (or three) on her way home, and she actually feels her palms turn clammy at the question. A quick glance in Mark’s direction reveals that he’s leaning back in his chair, his wine glass dangling from his fingers like he’s some sort of comic book villain, and Maria seriously considers knocking the glass into his face before storming from the restaurant. 

Instead, she drops her eyes right back to her menu, mulling over the fish options like she’s missed the question entirely. “I told you I don’t want to talk about this,” she reminds him lightly.

Mark snorts. “Yeah, except if you don’t tell me, I’ll ask Ed.” He leans on her brother’s name, and she grits her teeth to keep from glaring at him. “And he won’t just tell me about your baby daddy—”

“Do _not_ call him that,” Maria warns tightly.

“—but he’ll share everything he thinks of the guy. I mean, your brothers came to town, right? Means that you either introduced them to your boyfriend—or explained why you don’t have one.”

The word _boyfriend_ sounds like a playground sneer—like he’s pulling her pigtails with the word, enjoying her discomfort—and she immediately slams her menu shut. She plants her hands on the edge of the table, ready to push back her chair and leave, but suddenly, the waiter’s at her shoulder. “Are you ready to order?” he asks.

Across the table, Mark plasters on a simpering smile. “Can we have another minute or two?” he asks, and the waiter nods before he walks away. When Maria turns her glare on him, he holds the smile. “Don’t storm off,” he says, his voice completely calm and also completely unapologetic, and she curls her fingers against the tablecloth instead of responding. “I’m sorry. I maybe went a little too far.”

“Maybe?” 

“Okay, I definitely went too far. I just—” He sighs and cards fingers through his messy hair. “I guess I’m still adjusting to the shock. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.” When she hesitates, still perched on the edge of her chair—awkwardly, too, given how swollen and full her middle is at this point in the pregnancy—his shoulders soften. “I won’t bring it up again. Just stay.”

She swallows, her heart still hammering somewhere in the back of her throat—because just like her brothers, Mark still knows every button to push until she’s about ready to explode at him—but she relaxes slightly, too. She scoots back in her chair, readjusts her extra weight (and a second time when the squash kicks her somewhere soft), and reaches for her water. She waits until she stops seeing red to say, “Please don’t ask Ed about Jasper.”

Mark’s whole face creases into one giant frown. “Who?” he asks, and he blinks when her jaw tightens. “Maria, I honestly don’t know—”

“Please spend ten seconds considering context clues before you finish that sentence,” she cuts in, and she rolls her eyes when realization finally dawns across his face. He starts to say something—probably another nosy question—and she holds up a hand. “I don’t care that you and Ed talk. I don’t even really care that he feeds you information about me because he’s convinced our divorce is just one big misunderstanding like in a shitty movie. But if you wheedle information about Jasper out of him, I swear to you, they will never find your body.”

He flashes her a tiny grin. “I like that you still threaten murder when you’re annoyed.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not a threat, Mark. It’s a promise.”

His grin shrivels up immediately, but before he’s able to comment, the waiter mercifully arrives to take their orders.

The conversation trickles into a meandering summary of Mark’s recent work triumphs, and Maria keeps from rolling her eyes mostly by glancing around the room and ignoring him. She counts tables, chairs, people, waiters—anything to keep from listening to Mark boast about stock portfolios and asset diversification. At dinners with Jasper, even before they started sleeping together, the conversation’d always wandered to dozens of random topics: movies, sports, books, memories. With Mark, it’s just the same old _why Mark Trainor is the greatest ever_ propaganda, repurposed and with new window dressing.

Maria desperately wants to go home.

She almost says this aloud when he stops droning on about work to refill his glass—but then, he glances right at her, and the words dry up. There’s something almost unreadable in his expression, and for some reason, she finds herself shifting her weight, fidgety as a teenager. 

“What?” she asks once the silence is too much.

“I,” he says haltingly, but he purses his lips before he finishes the thought. He sets the wine bottle down and leans forward, his elbows resting lightly on the tabletop. “Look, Maria, I don’t know anything about the guy who put you in this position or what your relationship with him is like,” he says after a moment, “but I want you to know that I still care about you. As bad as everything got at the end, you’re still the first girl I ever really loved. And if you need somebody in your corner now, someone who cares about you and can care about this baby, then—”

“ _Seriously_?” Maria interrupts, and when Mark nods solemnly, she very nearly bursts out laughing. As it stands, the near-laugh that bubbles out catches the attention of the couples on either side of their table, but she ignores their unsubtle stares to gape at Mark. “You think you’re in the position to— What? Offer to be my knight in shining armor? The guy who selflessly raises my bastard child to make up for the fact that he cheated on me through the last six months of law school?”

The color drains from his face. “Listen, Maria—”

“No, Mark, _you_ listen,” she fires back, and he immediately snaps his jaw shut. When she inhales, she swears her whole body shakes. “I have tried for—what, seven years now?—to play nice with you. To come have dinner once every six or ten months, to split a bottle of wine and try to pretend that I don’t hate the way you treated me or the fact that my brother still thinks you’re my greatest accomplishment. But tonight, I came to tell you that I can’t do this anymore.”

Mark frowns. “You can’t do what?” he asks, and he sounds simultaneously defensive and clueless. “Have a friendly dinner? Swap work stories over wine? Remember what a good time we used to have together?”

“Pretend that I can still see any shadow of the person I cared about sitting across this table.” A momentary flicker of hurt passes across his expression, but Maria just shakes her head. “This isn’t a friendly dinner, Mark. We don’t like each other enough to have a friendly dinner. This is some, I don’t even know what to call it. Some nostalgic bullshit where we pretend that we don’t mind being in the same room.” She huffs out a long breath. “God, it’s good we never had kids. Could you imagine us trying to manage custody exchanges when we can’t even have a civil conversation?”

“You mean when _you_ can’t have a civil conversation,” Mark snaps back. There’s biting venom in his voice, and Maria actually blinks in surprise as he tosses his head like a sulking teenager. “You might not like me enough for this to be a friendly dinner, but I still like you. I still love you—although I’m not sure why, right now.” He snorts slightly. “Don’t pretend this is on me at all, Maria. Because, as always, this is all about you.”

There’s an edge to the end of that last sentence, steel that reminds her of the last time that he accused her of being selfish (the week she signed their divorce papers, incidentally), and Maria only realizes that she’s pushed back her chair to stand once she’s looming over the table. She flattens her hands against the tablecloth, aware that there are at least a dozen strangers staring at her back, and she ignores every one of them to glare straight at Mark. 

“Maybe it is about me,” she tells him honestly, and she hates the fact that her voice trembles, “but in a couple months, there’s going to be a small person who needs me more than anyone else in the universe, and if _ever_ I needed a good reason to stop putting up with your bullshit, he’s it.”

She’s aware, to some degree, that Mark’s gaping after her, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide enough to reflect the candlelight.

But she’s so busy storming out of the restaurant, she misses the full effect of his shocked face—or the overwhelming satisfaction that should follow.

Her whole body feels like it’s quaking by the time she steps out of the church-turned-restaurant, and her shaking knees only barely manage to carry her all the way to her car before they sort of buckle on her. She half-sits, half-collapses into the driver’s seat, her hands balling into fists and punching the steering wheel like it’s personally offended her, and for a couple minutes, that’s all she’s able to do: rage at the world from inside her car, her cheeks wet and her breath coming in ragged, heaving pants. She’s angry at everyone she knows, in that moment—at Ed, at Jasper, at Mark, at _herself_ , at her absentee mother and her emotionally distant father, at the baby who’s still squirming around inside her and at the strangers who are probably still staring at her empty chair inside the restaurant. But in a few minutes, when her fists start to hurt and her breathing slows, she realizes she’s really only angry at herself, and only for hurting Jasper.

She leans forward and rests her forehead on her steering wheel until her heart stops beating so fast. Her hands still shake a little when she dries her face with a couple fast food napkins squirreled away in the glove compartment, but that’s better than driving home with raccoon eyes.

And that’s exactly what Maria means to do, too—drive home, change into her pajamas, and write another couple text messages to the man who won’t even speak to her—but she turns three stoplights too early and heads straight into an older part of town. She loops past a doughnut shop and a park, before finally—

Warm laughter greets her first, seeping in through her open windows as she pulls to a stop behind the purple Beetle parked along the curb. Long shadows dance across Phil’s front yard, illuminated by the porch light as well as the last fingers of sun stretching along the horizon, and Maria almost rolls her eyes as she steps out of the car and discovers that one of those shadows belongs to a tall teenage girl in cut-off shorts and a sweatshirt. 

“Some of us have plans tonight, Barton,” the teen chides, her hands on her hips. “And trust me, they _don’t_ involve you taking eight years to line up your toss.”

“Lawn darts are an art, Katie-Kate,” Clint returns, “and way more important than your date with America.” Kate Bishop sputters a little at that, her face glowing pink in the dim light, and Clint grins. “What? You think I didn’t know about the horror movie marathon at Billy’s tonight?”

Kate scowls. “I hate that you talk to Teddy’s foster dads.”

“Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on you,” Clint replies as he swings his arm back. The yellow lawn dart sails across the front yard in a near-perfect arc, and Kate groans aloud as it lands cleanly inside the plastic hoop near her feet. “And you thought I couldn’t tie it back up.”

Kate crosses her arms over her chest. “I swear you’re cheating,” she accuses, glaring at Clint’s laughter until the moment Maria closes her car door. They both jolt a little at the noise—apparently, nighttime lawn darts can even distract the world’s most observant man—and Maria’s not entirely surprised to see Kate squaring her shoulders like she’s bracing for a blow. To most people, Maria’s just a woman in a decent dress and low heels. To Kate, she’s a reminder of last summer’s special hell.

Clint, on the other hand, rolls his eyes. “She doesn’t bite, Kate,” he says easily, a shitty little grin crossing his face. “At least, according to Sitwell.”

Kate unclenches a little at that, but Maria— For the first time in the two years that Clint’s been her colleague (and, arguably, her friend), she discovers that she can’t quite pull a face at his stupid joke. Instead, she feels _wrong_ somehow, like she’s just barged in on a private moment, and she’s left plastering on a fake, plastic smile.

Clint must notice her expression, too, because his grin immediately softens. “Phil’s inside watching _Real Housewives_ and waiting to call 911 about our dart game,” he reports, and Maria almost laughs when she and Kate snort in near-perfect unison. “I think he’s still hoarding peppermint tea, ginger ale, and his own private copy of _What to Expect When You’re Expecting_ if you wanna go in.”

Maria nods slightly. “Thanks,” she says, and she squeezes Clint’s hand when he claps her on the shoulder. Kate watches closely, her eyes bright in the dying light, and Maria raises her eyebrows. “You staying out of trouble?” she asks.

Kate shrugs. “I’m hanging out with Barton, aren’t I?” 

“So, no,” Maria replies, and the girl blinks for a second before she bursts out into a delighted cackle.

Clint immediately accuses Kate of being a _disloyal little shit_ —one of Tony’s favorite pet names for Bruce, incidentally—and Maria shakes her head fondly at both of them as she steps up onto the stoop and then into the house. It’s warm and bright inside, all loud commercials and glowing lamps, and she smiles at the sound of Phil banging around in the kitchen as she slips off her shoes. 

“If one of you is bleeding, I’m not fixing it,” he offers as she wanders down the hallway, his voice half-muffled. In the kitchen, he stands with his head in the fridge and a wide variety of empty or mostly-empty jars spread out on the counters around him, the skeletal remains of pickles, salsa, minced garlic, and three different kinds of pasta sauce. “Also, do you realize that our fridge has become a mold breeding ground? I’m pretty sure you bought this apple sauce before we were even really dating, and since you just had your two-year anniversary at work—”

“You should bronze it to show your grandkids?” Maria suggests, and she actually grins when Phil whips around hard enough that he nails his elbow on the fridge door. He swears under his breath, and she holds up her hands. “At least I’m not a bleeding husband,” she points out.

“Only because my bleeding husband knows better than to ask me for any sympathy,” he responds. She snorts, still smiling, as he rubs his elbow. For a moment, they just watch each other—Phil in a t-shirt and jeans, Maria in her dress and jewelry—before Phil rolls his lips together. “Bad night?”

She shakes her head. “Bad two weeks.”

He frowns slightly at that, his brow creasing, and Maria’s about to wave away all his worry when the squash kicks her again, harder than at the restaurant. It catches her off guard, winding her a little, but when she plants a hand low on her belly, Phil tenses like a runner on the starting blocks. 

“He’s just squirmy,” Maria promises before he’s able to grab the nearest phone and dial 911. “Nothing dramatic.”

“You’re in your third trimester. We’re all going to be dramatic until he’s here.” Maria rolls her eyes, but as soon as she straightens back up to her full height, Phil gestures toward the kitchen table. “Let me clean up Clint’s graveyard of unfinished snacks, and then we can talk. You want anything?”

“Clint said you’ve been hoarding peppermint tea for me.”

Phil snorts. “Clint left out the part about how he’s started drinking it like it’s the elixir of youth,” he returns, and Maria actually laughs as she lowers herself into one of the hard kitchen chairs.

They lose a few minutes to Phil bustling around like a worried old lady—cleaning off the counter, filling the kettle, bringing down coffee mugs and tea bags—and despite herself, Maria ends up studying the line of his back as he works. He’s a far cry from the buttoned-up assistant district attorney she’d met during her first day at the office, his tie perfectly straight and his shirt starched white, and if she’s honest, she likes this Phil a lot better. He’s a man who’ll happily lounge around in a wrinkled Chicago Cubs t-shirt and worn jeans, who’ll roll his eyes at his husband’s accusations of lawn dart malfeasance when they echo in from the front yard, who’ll glance over while Maria rubs a hand over the swell of her middle and _smile_. He’s warm and comfortable now, like he’s scrubbed away all the layers of artificial firmness to reveal the real Phil Coulson, and Maria’s left wondering: is this Clint’s doing, or just the way Phil’s evolved on his own?

And is there a slouchy, comfortable Maria Hill hidden somewhere under her collection of suits and her severe (to quote Clint) _resting bitch face_?

Phil shuts off the television as the tea bags steep, and by the time he sits down next to her at the table, the house is quiet and still. “Kate won’t admit it to anyone but Clint,” he explains as he presses his palms to his mug, “but there’s apparently some girl-and-also-boy trouble afoot and Clint’s the best sounding board she’s got.”

Maria smirks. “Does she realize that relying on Clint is an act of desperation?”

“I think Clint’s already told her that three or four times, but according to Kate, he’s—and this is a quote—‘good at that feelings crap.’” She laughs at his finger quotes, and he grins right back. “I keep asking him how we acquired a teenager and when we can return her, but he just rolls his eyes.”

“Better a teenager than a squash,” Maria points out, and Phil shakes his head at her as he sips his tea. The room falls silent again, but in a familiar way, and she steadies herself by watching the steam that rises from her mug. “Jasper and I fought— I don’t know, at the end of last month,” she says after a few seconds, “and he’s still not talking to me.”

He frowns. “And that’s why you decided to swing by?”

She snorts a little. “No, I came here because I almost lobotomized Mark in the middle of a restaurant,” she admits, and she smiles when Phil almost chokes on his mouthful of tea. “I just— I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, Phil. And every time I think I know, something . . . ”

The words slip away, spinning quickly out of reach, and she rolls her lips together instead of finishing the sentence. Next to her, Phil settles his mug back on the table, his fingers curled around it like he expects it to grow legs and walk away from him, but he also keeps quiet. Like in the courtroom, Maria thinks with a little shake of her head. Time for her to either gather her thoughts or hang herself, whichever comes first.

She tucks the loose strands of her hair—longer and wavier than she prefers, another accidental side-effect of squash-related hormones—before she sighs. “Jasper has faith like a bottomless pit,” she says finally, “and as much as I want to believe that he’s right—that we can just power through this together, that we can have this baby—I can’t stop thinking about what happens if he’s wrong.”

Phil nods slightly, and she tries not to shift uncomfortably as he spends a few seconds studying her face. “Wrong about which part?” he asks, and he shrugs when Maria glances over to frown at him. “Because having the baby generally and having him with Jasper are two very different things.”

“Are they?” Maria fires back, and she releases a long, shaky breath when he blinks blankly at her. “I have no idea how to be a mother, let alone a partner _and_ a mother. The one time I tried, he ended up sleeping with a nineteen-year-old teller named Amanda.” His mouth twitches at that, but he hides his almost-laugh behind his mug. “I’ve never had a relationship _not_ end in misery,” she reminds him, “and this time, there’s going to be a tiny person who needs us to love him and one another.”

Phil waits a few seconds, her voice echoing around them, before he says, “You don’t need to love one another to be good parents to your son.” She rolls her eyes a little, but he just shakes his head. “You don’t even need to be together, Maria. Plenty of parents, _good_ parents, don’t end up with their partners long-term. Even your dad—”

“My dad is a master class in why I can never be a single parent, and you know it,” Maria snaps, and Phil immediately pushes his lips together. She glances away, staring out the window while her fingers dig back through her hair. “I want to do this with him,” she murmurs after what feels like ages. “I just don’t know how to do it without screwing up—or worse, becoming my mom.”

She only realizes that she’s said the last couple words—that horrible admission that she’s sat on for months now, ever since she glanced at her calendar and realized that she’d skipped her period in October—when she hears them, and even then, they only really sink in when Phil reaches over and squeezes her hand. In the whole time they’ve worked together, she’s only mentioned her mother a handful of times, and always by accident. Whether Phil’s assembled the story from context clues, she’s not sure, but either way, she squeezes his hand back.

“You work in an office surrounded by people whose childhoods read like Grimm’s fairy tales,” he reminds her. “Bruce, Tony, Clint, Natasha— They could all write memoirs about being scarred by their parents. Hell, even some of the people with living parents are still reeling from when they were kids. But they all managed to get over that hump and become good parents and partners.” He pauses for a moment before he shrugs. “Sometimes, I think half the reason Clint’s such a good husband—and mentor to Kate—is _because_ of how he grew up, not in spite of it.”

Maria wrinkles her nose. “You’re going to make me vomit.”

He grins. “And here, I thought morning sickness ended around the second trimester,” he teases, and she slides her hand out of his grip to smack him in the arm. He laughs at that, his crow’s feet crinkling, and for the first time all night—the first time since her fight with Jasper, really—Maria feels her chest start to loosen. “Let me ask you something,” he says as he leans his arms on the table. “Do you think you could fall in love with Jasper?”

She groans. “Phil, I’m not a teenage girl, I don’t need—”

“I’m not asking you this to be the extra older brother you never wanted, Maria,” he cuts in, and she drops her eyes back to her lukewarm tea. “You’re afraid you’ll run away if the going gets tough, but in my experience, you’re also biologically incapable of abandoning someone you love. It’s why you still talk to Ed no matter how big of an asshole he’s being—and why you’re willing to have dinner with Mark a couple times a year.”

“It’s why I _was_ willing.” He raises an eyebrow at that, and she shakes her head. “I realized tonight I can’t do it anymore. Whoever— _whatever_ —Mark is, he’s not the man I married, and I can’t—” 

Her voice falters a little, and when she’s done washing it away with a big gulp of tea, she realizes that Phil’s smiling at her. “You’re incapable of giving up on people you love,” he says again, more emphatically than before, “and I think if there’s even a _glimmer_ of a chance that Jasper’s one of those people, you’ll stick with him. No matter how scared you get.”

She rolls her lips together, her gaze dropping to her hands before she finally nods. Jerkily, almost like she’s a dashboard bobblehead on a gravel road, but—

But even before they tripped into bed together, handsy and half-drunk after Tony’s stupid Fourth of July party, she’d wondered whether she might someday fall in love with Jasper Sitwell. Whether they might someday become bigger than the sum of their parts, friends who shared dinners and movies _and_ their bed every night, not this fragmented almost-relationship they keep building and breaking apart.

That she keeps breaking apart, she thinks, and her stomach suddenly twists. Because the only person knocking down their rickety Jenga tower of a relationship—the only person balking at Jasper’s beautiful, boundless faith in what they’ve fallen into—is her.

“I might have screwed this up beyond repair, you know,” she points out once her stomach stops rolling over itself, and Phil frowns at her as she glances up. “Our fight about Mark—and Ed, really, since he’s really the one who started it—it might—” She pauses to shake her head. “He might not forgive me, this time.”

“You love somebody enough, and their fuck-ups stop being the important part,” Clint says suddenly, and Maria jerks her head away from Phil just in time to watch him saunter into the kitchen. “I mean, sure, they sting, but when you actually love the person? You’re more worried about how they’re gonna fix what they screwed up than how exactly they screwed it in the first place.” He stops just behind Phil’s chair and frowns. “At least, in my case. Your mileage might vary.”

In front of his husband, Phil rolls his eyes. “You already got a wedding out of last summer’s fuck-ups, Clint. Don’t push your luck.”

“Yeah, but _blow jobs_ ,” Clint counters maturely, and he laughs when Maria screws her face up in a scowl. Phil sighs like a long-suffering spouse, but the warmth in his eyes as he sips his tea tells an entirely different story. “And I’m serious,” Clint presses after a moment. “If Jasper gives two shits about you, he’ll care a lot more about you trying to fix it than he will about how you broke it.”

Maria snorts a little. “And what exactly makes you think he cares enough about me to let this go?” 

Clint shrugs. “Mostly, it’s because he looks at you the way I look at Phil,” he answers, and he swipes Phil’s mostly empty mug before wandering right back out of the kitchen. 

 

==

 

That night, Maria stands in the empty green room next to her bedroom and listens to the breeze whistle in the trees outside the window.

_I don’t know how to make this better or right_ , she texts to Jasper, _but the second I do, I swear I’ll fix it. For all three of us._

When she wakes up on top of her covers the next morning, still groggy from a fitful night of sleep, there’s a single message waiting on her phone.

**Him:** _good. because I miss you._

 

== 

 

“Next on the docket is 13-2372C, _State versus Mason L. Rowley_ ,” Judge Brassels drawls, his voice a low, almost soothing rumble through the silent courtroom. “Appearances by the parties, please.”

“Of course, your honor,” Grant Ward provides as he slithers from his seat, and in the back of the courtroom, Maria works _very_ hard not to roll her eyes.

Monday morning docket in Judge Brassels’s courtroom always feels like this, a master class in fundamental blandness, and Maria knows for a fact that every other attorney in the room is struggling to stay awake. In the first row behind the bar that separates the gallery from the well of the courtroom, Wade Wilson’s head actually nods where he’s propped it up on a hand, his mouth hanging open; when Sif Rowan pokes him in the ribs with a pen, he jerks so hard that he dumps all his case files on the floor. He swears loud enough as he ducks to clean up the mess that Brassels pauses the sentencing hearing to glare at him, and Maria hides her snort behind her hand. 

Ward coughs a little and straightens his jacket before launching back into his sentencing argument. When Phil glances back in Maria’s direction, his eyebrows raised—probably in triumph, since he’s still championing their one male intern as _not an entire bag of dicks_ —Maria shrugs and returns to her own file.

“Please tell me when he stops staring at me in hopes of my tacit approval,” she mutters to Bucky.

He pauses almost mid-yawn to blink at her. “What are we talking about?”

“Phil. Specifically, Phil and his puppy.” When Bucky frowns, his brow furrowing very prettily—another of the eight hundred reminders why Steve picked _him_ out of all the other men in the universe—Maria shakes her head. “Never mind. The monotony is starting to rot my brain.”

Bucky snorts. “Tell me about it. The longer I appear in front of Brassels, the more I think I need to take up cocaine just to make it through docket calls.”

Maria grins at him. “Another perk of being the low man on the totem pole,” she reminds him, and he rolls his eyes at her as he returns to his notes.

In most courtrooms, docket calls—especially Monday morning docket calls—are hectic nightmares, full to brimming with frustrated attorneys, terrified (or, worse, cocky asshole) defendants, hand-wringing relatives, and random members of law enforcement. But because Judge Brassels believes very firmly in quality over quantity—and, apparently, in forcing at least one prosecutor to visit his courtroom every day—his docket calls are slow and sparse. 

Maria’d actually checked the scheduling sheet in the hallway that morning three different times, convinced that her case (a long-standing restitution battle) could not be just one of _five_ that morning. The judge’s executive assistant had laughed in her face when she asked whether someone’d swiped the first page. “Welcome to Judge Brassels’s courtroom,” she’d said when she’d finished snickering, and Maria’d scowled.

For the first time, she misses Judge Hammersmith’s ruthless _we’re done by lunch even if it kills us all_ morning pace.

She also stares at her notes until her eyes start to cross. “I might actually lose my mind,” she mutters as she slams the folder shut. Next to her, Bucky chuckles without glancing up from his cell phone. “Please tell me you have a secret stash of Red Bull hidden somewhere in this courtroom.”

He smirks. “What would your baby daddy say if he knew you were looking for energy drinks?”

“You mean after we both slugged you for calling him my baby daddy?” Maria retorts, and Bucky snorts. For the first time since her fight with Jasper, her pulse remains steady, unbothered by talking about him. Or maybe, she thinks, her heart’s finally resigned to the fact that she’s bruised and battered her one good relationship possibly beyond repair. The thought frustrates her, and she huffs at herself before glancing back over at Bucky. “Is that how you survive?” she asks. When he frowns, she nods at his phone. “I assume you’re either playing Words with Friends or texting Steve, and either way—”

“Actually, I’m looking back over at the house we just put an offer on and wondering if we’ve lost our damn minds.” Maria blinks a little, not really hiding her surprise, and Bucky grins as he hands her his phone. “I think we’ve been shopping around since August or something,” he admits, his voice turning bashful as Maria flicks through the pictures of the cozy little two-story, “but actually biting the bullet— I don’t know. I feel like we’re maybe not as ready as we want to be, but Steve’s so sure.”

Maria chuckles as she glances up from a shot of the kitchen’s gleaming countertops. “Isn’t _too sure for his own good_ Steve’s middle name?”

“Sometimes, I wonder about that,” Bucky admits with a grin, and she laughs as she hands the phone back over. He flicks through a few more photos until he reaches the last one: Dot, standing on the porch of the house with her hands on her hips, a six-year-old queen surveying her kingdom. “It’s scary to think we came this far so fast,” he says with a little shake of his head. “It feels like I just finished up my deployment and came home yesterday. Now, we’re buying a house. Talking about a second kid.” Maria touches her heavy belly without thinking, and the corner of Bucky’s mouth quirks up into a grin. “Not that you need to hear about that from me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Why is everyone in this office so hell-bent on being overprotective?” she demands.

“Probably because most of us are either asshole guys, your friends, _or_ your asshole guy friends,” Bucky immediately replies. She snorts at him, shaking her head, but he nudges their shoulders together. “I know Steve’s the one who did the whole handshake-and-hug congratulations thing,” he adds, “but for what it’s worth, I think it’s a good look on you.”

“Being enormously pregnant?”

“You mean I can’t tell you you’re glowing?” She narrows her eyes, and he hides his laugh—and probably his twinkling little grin—behind his legal pad. He only lowers it after she flips her file back open. “It shows off the chinks in your armor,” he adds after a few seconds. “Not that I think that you need to show off that you’re a mere mortal or whatever, but it’s nice. To be reminded that even the big, bad Maria Hill’s a person underneath.”

She purses her lips, her eyes still trained on her notes. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Barnes.”

“Hey, I practiced against you more than once,” he retorts with a shrug. “If anybody in our office knows first-hand how big and bad you are, it’s me.”

The sentencing hearing in front of them _finally_ wraps up—seriously, Maria’s not sure whether Brassels or Ward speaks more deliberately, but either way, her brain’s starting to atrophy—and the defense attorney claps his client on the shoulder before security leads him away. The next defendant’s an enormous brute of a guy, all shoulders and chest, and Maria actually snorts when she realizes his neck tattoo reads _Mom_. In the front of the gallery, Wilson releases an impressed little noise, and this time, Phil, Ward, and Sif all join the judge in glaring at him.

“I can’t decide whether Wade’ll get disbarred or killed first,” Bucky murmurs, and Maria rolls her lips together to keep from grinning.

The defendant settles uncomfortably into one of the vinyl chairs at counsel table as Brassels calls the case—just a bond reduction hearing, nothing worth wasting valuable brain cells on—and Ward once again enters the appearance on behalf of their office. Maria scowls at his monotone (and Phil’s disgustingly proud mentor smile) before finally returning to her notes.

She’s about halfway finished with her read-through when the security guard shouts.

Later, when she provides her official statement to Rhodey (her hands still shaking, her throat dry, her whole body on red-alert like she’s just stepped out of a warzone), she’ll remember only snippets of what happened, but when she first snaps her head up from her notes, the whole scene flickers like they’re caught in the artificial slow motion of a strobe light. The defendant’s out of his chair, an uncapped pen clutched in one meaty fist, and both Sif and Wilson scramble out of their chairs at almost the exact instant that the man reaches out and slugs the security guard hard in the face. The security guard stumbles and falls, his hand floating uselessly over his taser. The defendant leaves him on the floor as he twists around, his face red with rage and his whole body swollen like he’s about to explode, and the fist with the pen swipes out, reaching for his attorney. The attorney dodges away, the pen missing him by inches, but he’s still untangling himself from his chair when the defendant swings his other fist and cold-cocks him in the face.

He, like the security guard, falls limply to the ground. 

And in that instant, Maria realizes that the only two people left in the well of the courtroom are Ward and Phil.

She’s dimly aware of Bucky physically grabbing her by the arm and yanking her out of her seat, her file spilling on the floor in front of her, and the sudden transition from sitting to standing leaves her head spinning. She tries to tell Bucky that, to warn him that between her screwed-up center of gravity and the quick movement (never mind her heart pounding in her chest, throat, and ears), she’s not steady on her feet, but then the room swims hard enough that she almost falls. She clutches at the seat in front of her, her other hand forcing Bucky away, and the defendant swipes at Ward with the pen. Ward feints left before dodging right, but somehow, the huge man with the _Mom_ tattoo is faster, and Ward’s shocked cry of pain when the defendant stabs him hard in the arm echoes through the courtroom.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Maria realizes that half of the noise deafening her is actually the alarm from Judge Brassels’s panic button screeching out in the hallway. She thinks about shouting that to Phil and Ward—that the alarm’s blaring, that _someone_ is coming—when the room suddenly tilts and her vision sort of blacks out.

 

==

 

“Breathe,” Bucky instructs at some point later, and Maria nods unevenly as she tips forward on the bench outside the courtroom, her whole body still shuddering. 

She’s not sure how exactly she ended up on the bench with a blanket around her shoulders and a paramedic checking her pulse (and her pupils and blood pressure), but she’s still too shaken up to really ask. Phil hovers nearby with a clump of security officers, his hair disheveled and his coat ripped from when he apparently helped fight off the defendant until a security team arrived. But he keeps glancing in Maria’s direction, his face creased with concern, and Maria’s too busy clutching her knees and steadying her breathing to wave him off.

Worse, the squash (of the large butternut variety) won’t stop wriggling, his little feet and elbows digging in everywhere and stealing what little breath Maria’s able to catch. “Asshole,” she mutters, and presses a hand to the side of the belly.

Bucky snorts out a laugh. “And there she is,” he says, his voice straddling right on the edge of giddy and relieved, and he graciously accepts the elbow she digs into his ribs. 

The paramedic rolls his eyes at the both of them and reaches for Maria’s wrist to check her pulse for the third or fourth time. Maria almost slaps him away, but then, someone suddenly says, “ _Phil_.” The voice is tense, sort of half-strangled, and Maria only recognizes it as Clint’s after he’s surging down the hallway, his whole expression hunted and wild. He reaches Phil just as Phil turns away from the security officers, and absolutely no one is surprised when he grabs Phil by the lapels of his suit coat and crushes their mouths together.

Phil fists his hands in Clint’s hair, kissing him back hard and wet enough that the security officers all back slowly away. Maria rolls her eyes as she glances in the other direction, equal parts disgusted and embarrassed by their public display of affection (and maybe just a little self-conscious to be horning in on it)—but when her eyes finally settle on the almost-empty hallway, she freezes.

Because standing just a few feet away, his whole body heaving as though he just charged down the stairs, is Jasper.

His face is pale and panicked, as wild and lost as when Leo Fitz’d rushed after Ward and the paramedics on the way to the emergency room, and the second their gazes meet, Maria feels the hot prickle of tears against her eyes. She shakes her wrist free of the paramedic’s grip and forces herself to her feet, her legs still strangely unsteady, and she only realizes that she’s dropped the blanket off her shoulders _after_ she raises her hands. “I’m fine,” she says, but the lie catches in the back of her throat and leaves her voice trembling. “I got a little dizzy and disoriented, but otherwise—”

She’s not sure when exactly she closes the distance between them—her body keeps moving without her permission, almost as though gravity’s dragging her away from the bench and toward Jasper—but suddenly, they’re standing face-to-face. He wipes the damp off her cheeks with one hand, and the other slides down her side. For a split-second, she expects him to spider his fingers over the belly—to check on the squash as much as her—but instead, he wraps her up in his embrace and pulls her as close as possible. 

“They fucking told us somebody went berserk in court, but they wouldn’t let us down ‘til the dust cleared,” he says close to her ear, and all at once Maria realizes that he’s shaking, too, his voice breathy as she presses her face into his shoulder. “Made me and Clint stand at the top of the stairs like dumbasses until they were sure the guy was subdued and locked up, and I just kept thinking—”

“I’m okay,” she promises, but the way her fingers curl in the back of his shirt tell a different story. When she finally glances up to meet his eyes again—to face all his worry, his fear, his _love_ (because even if that’s the wrong word, it’s the first one that springs to mind)—she can’t help her stupid, watery smile. “I’m glad you came down,” she admits. “I know I screwed up, but I’m still—”

“Yeah, we’re not worrying about that part right now,” Jasper cuts her off, and when all the emotions of the last couple weeks—never mind the last ten minutes—trickle out in the form of hot, wet tears, he just holds her tighter and kisses her hairline.

 

==

 

“My mom left when I was three,” Maria says Tuesday afternoon, “and sometimes, I think it screwed me up more than I’m willing to admit.”

She’s walking with Jasper down the sidewalk that loops around one of the local lakes, the warm spring breeze sweeping around them and rustling the leaves in the trees. Maria tips her head up to squint into the fingers of sunlight that somehow force their way through the green, and she smiles at the warmth on her face. Thanks to the incident in Judge Brassels’s courtroom, she, Bucky, and Phil are all on three days of involuntary administrative leave to _cobble their heads back into some semblance of order, shit_. Maria’d left work and driven straight to her doctor’s for a quick once-over—just in case, she’d told herself in the car, her mind rattling around like somebody’d just shaken her—before heading home and napping all afternoon.

Jasper’d arrived after work with at least a week’s worth of groceries, an overnight bag, and an expression so desperate and determined that Maria’d hidden her smile behind the door as she’d invited him in.

Now, almost a full day later, he’s still at her side, his fingers brushing hers as they wander around the lake.

They’ve filled the last twenty-four hours with dozens of distractions—crappy TV, four very contentious games of Scrabble, lazy morning sex, a trip to three different baby stores to poke cribs and changing tables—but for some reason, walking slowly around the lake relaxes Maria, leaves her wanting to talk. Wanting to open herself up stitch by stitch, she thinks, a feeling so foreign that her chest seizes up in a rare bolt of panic. 

Except when she glances over at Jasper, he just raises his eyebrows, patiently waiting for the next sentence.

This, she realizes, is why she’d once stopped chewing in the middle of a friendly dinner and decided she might someday fall for Jasper. Because no matter how many padlocked iron gates she builds into her walls, he always stands outside them and waits for her to hand over the key.

“You wanna sit down?” he asks after they’ve lost another twenty seconds to silence.

She presses her lips together. “Do you ever wonder if maybe you’re _too_ patient?” she wonders aloud. He laughs, and she frowns at him. “What?”

“The second you meet my sisters, you’ll know where the hell all this patience comes from,” he replies lightly, and she rolls her eyes at him as he steers them toward a park bench.

The lake ripples in the breeze, sparkling like a sapphire in the sunlight, and Maria stares into the glare for a few seconds before she finally sits down on the bench. A woman with one of those jogging strollers rolls by on the sidewalk, but she flashes them a smile before she passes. Maria wonders whether she’s showing solidarity instead of just being polite: _yeah, I know the hell you’re in right now, I used to be huge and uncomfortable, too._ Maria almost wants to stop her, but by time she wonders whether the jogger ever ached all over (and whether the baby’s a boy or a girl), she’s already rounded the corner.

Jasper stretches his arms along the back of the bench, but he stays quiet as his eyes trace Maria’s face. She brushes a couple loose strands of hair back behind her ears and draws in a fortifying breath before she says, “I forget sometimes, you know? Not that she left—hard to forget that part—but that there are people out there who didn’t grow up with their fathers growling about how _you kids need to look out for one another_ at dinner. It’s—” She shakes her head. “It can screw with your head.”

He squints slightly. “This whole thing with your brothers is because your dad used to grumble about you guys taking care of each other?” he asks, and Maria swallows tightly at the disbelief in his voice. “Because as reasons go, that’s pretty—”

“We moved around, Jasper,” she interrupts, and he purses his lips instead of finishing his thought. “I can’t— Until you live like that, moving from base to base and wondering whether you’ll stay long enough to make friends this time, you really can’t understand what it’s like. My dad and my brothers, they were all I had. My whole world, shoved into one tiny house on a street of other tiny houses.” 

She shifts slightly, her whole body still sore from the last couple days of tension (never mind her struggle to sleep properly), and she ends up leaning back, her head tipped up to the sky. “Dad’s better now, but growing up? He was that stereotypical dad with the shotgun on your first date, and Ed usually stood behind him with his arms crossed. Like the fact I was a girl negated my ability to make good decisions.”

Jasper snorts. “Pretty fucking awful at decision-making,” he mutters—a tiny side comment he clearly means to keep to himself—but Maria’s blood freezes to ice water anyway. She’s wondered for almost two weeks how much of her conversation with Ed he’d overheard from the living room, and knowing that he remembers enough to quote her brother word-for-word— Her throat tightens, but Jasper just shakes his head. 

“I never understood guys like that,” he says, almost as though he’s not just echoed her brother. “Best way to teach a girl that she’s valueless without a man’s to act like she is. My dad would’ve killed me if I even pretended to posture like that in front of my sisters.”

“You dad didn’t have his wife walk out without leaving a forwarding address.” He frowns, his brow creasing, and Maria holds up her hands. “I’m not defending any of them. They’re indefensible. I just— I’m telling you that I’ve spent thirty-plus years figuring out how to balance them with the rest of my life, and it all came to a fucked-up head in my kitchen that night.”

Jasper nods slightly. “And drove you into Mark’s arms.”

“No, Jasper, _not_ that.” He starts to roll his eyes, his expression almost as straight-up dismissive as it is hurt, and she sighs as she drags her fingers through her loose hair. “You want the truth about my dinner with Mark? Here it is: I planned that dinner three weeks before my brothers even showed up. It’s something I’ve done with him for years, something I—” The words stick in the back of her throat, and she shakes her head again. “Mark was a shitty husband,” she admits after a few seconds of heavy silence. “But we were eighteen and stupid, and I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. Finish college, marry him, move from my father’s house to my husband’s house and . . . ”

She trails off with a pathetic, almost meaningless shrug, and the corner of Jasper’s mouth kicks up into a tiny, shitty grin. “Spend your adult life barefoot and pregnant in your hubby’s kitchen?” he teases. 

“With socks in the winter,” she tags on, and he actually laughs. She nudges their arms together as punishment for that, and she’s not entirely surprised when he loops his arm around her shoulders and pulls her against him. “I didn’t even decide on law school until after he proposed,” she adds quietly, “and I don’t think I expected blowback from him or my family, but—”

“Wait, they didn’t want you to go to law school?” he demands. She glances out into the thicket of trees before she nods unevenly, and he immediately huffs out the most derisive breath she’s ever heard. “How the fuck could somebody meet you—meet your _brain_ —and not know that you were born to be a lawyer? Because whoever those folks are, they are dumbasses.”

Despite herself, Maria grins. “You might be a little biased,” she reminds him.

“Damn right I’m biased, I got the smartest woman in the office to sleep with me.” Maria snorts a laugh, and he grins back at her as he threads his fingers through her hair. “Okay, so, let me review for a second. Your dad and brothers are overprotective and apparently like that Mark’s a shithead you refuse to give up on, and even though they didn’t want you to go to law school, you still defer to them?”

“No, I more—” she starts to defend, but Jasper cuts her off with a quirk of an eyebrow. She frowns at him—at herself, really—and drops her eyes down to the last remnants of her lap. Her belly stretches out her shirt, one smooth swell from just under her breasts to her hips, and she stares at it for a few seconds before she sighs. 

“You went home that night,” she says quietly, “and I sat up thinking about my mom, and how much my dad struggled with the three of us, and I just—”

The words escape again, carried off on the spring breeze, and she closes her eyes against the hard wave of regret that washes over her. Ever since her discussion with Phil (and Clint), she’s fought hard to string this explanation together logically, but even now, after a dozen rough drafts scratched out on legal paper, she falls short. Because spelling out how she can laugh over dinner and tear up at the sight of a green-painted room and while still feeling breathlessly panicked about the birth of a baby she’d never planned is not the same as outlining a closing statement, and she’s never learned how to structure her life any other way. Not when her heart’s at stake. Not when her carefully forged armor, all her steel and spikes and ruthless determination, can protect her from ever hurting.

She hurt so much growing up and with Mark that she’s not sure she can brace herself against that tide again, and to explain that all to Jasper in a way that makes _sense_ is—

“My dad died about eight years ago.”

The words sneak out as a whisper, a murmur that hardly carries all the way to Maria’s ears never mind into the rest of the park, and when Maria jerks her head up, Jasper’s staring at the ground. He digs the toe of his sneaker into the dirt at their feet, his whole expression distant; when he draws in a breath, Maria swears she feels the shudder run through him like an earthquake. 

“It happened fast. Faster than maybe I expected, because you hear ‘cancer’ and don’t think ‘gone six months later,’ but—” He shakes his head slightly, almost like he’s clearing away the cobwebs, and raises his eyes to find hers. “My sisters and brother were all married by then and the girls had families to take care of, so I quit the force and moved in with my parents. Helped my mom nurse him through it and watched this guy I’d admired my whole life just fall apart.” 

His voice cracks a little at the end of the sentence, and Maria rolls her lips together as his throat bobs. She reaches up and traces the line of his jaw and the shell of his ear, a gentle ghost of a touch that he tips into. She wonders for a second who else can brag that they’ve touched him like this, soft and sweet.

She wonders whether she’d ever accept someone else touching him that way, and her heart climbs into her throat when she realizes the answer’s actually _no_.

“I think about having a kid without my dad around, and it scares the shit out of me,” Jasper half-whispers after a few more seconds, his eyes lifting to meet hers again. “The guy, he wasn’t just a role model for me, he was— I don’t know. A benchmark, maybe. Something to strive toward, somebody to be. When he died . . . ” He huffs out a rough breath and shakes his head. “I think about having a kid he’ll never meet, and it kills me,” he admits. “But then I look at you, and all I can think is that if anybody can help me figure out how to be the kind of dad he was, it’s you. And maybe I don’t say that enough or something, but—” 

“It’s you, too,” Maria blurts, and she almost laughs at the way Jasper jerks back a couple inches to blink at her. But she also smiles at him, and relief washes through her when he finally smiles back. “I should’ve stood up for you,” she says, “and I didn’t. I should’ve told you about all this the instant I thought I was pregnant, and I didn’t do that, either. And there will probably be a dozen times in the future where I don’t do the things I should because I’m stubborn and _stupid_ and hate admitting when I need help.” 

He snorts. “On second thought, maybe it’s not _actually_ you, and I—”

Maria rolls her eyes. “You’re such an asshole,” she mutters, but she also smoothes her thumb along his neck when he grins at her. They spend a long moment like that, his arm around her shoulders and her hand settled against his skin before she sighs and shakes her head. “I’m still not sure I can do this sometimes,” she admits quietly. “Not just have the baby and be his mom, but feel this way about both of you. It scares the shit out of me, and I’m still not sure how to handle it.”

Jasper swallows audibly. “But?” he asks.

She raises her eyes to meet his, and for the first time in the last few weeks—in the first time in twenty-nine weeks, really—she feels settled. More than that, she feels _certain_ , and she smiles like a giddy teenager. “But you’re worth it, you idiot.”

He grins. “And I’m the asshole?” he demands, and he allows her to smack him in the chest lightly before drawing her in for a long, leisurely kiss. 

 

== 

 

“Maybe we should try a holistic, medication-free home water birth with a doula and a midwife,” Jasper suggests as they pull up to the stop light, and Maria twists in her seat for the express purpose of scowling at him. A half-block away, the Suffolk County Birth Center—an ancient and half-crumbling red brick house converted into a self-styled _safe place for mothers and their babies to meet_ —looms ominously over the long line of cars. Maria suspects they’re driving the only non-hybrid in the bunch.

Worse than that—because worse things are apparently possible—Jasper shrugs off her glare. “Windchime Amaryllis’s mom—”

Maria groans aloud. “No.”

“—made a good point about birth being, what’d she say? A ‘whole body, whole spirit experience that peels open your soul.’ And besides, if epidurals really _do_ lower your baby’s IQ—” 

“If you don’t want me to lower _your_ IQ by performing a ballpoint pen lobotomy in this car,” Maria immediately threatens, “you’ll stop talking right now.”

Jasper grins at her like he’s just won some kind of shithead boyfriend lottery. “Whatever you say, Nate the Napa Cabbage’s mom,” he returns, and Maria rolls her eyes at him as they finally pull out into traffic.

Their first birth class at the birth center had felt like a slow descent into the most surreal kind of madness, and even now, fifteen full minutes after their final breathing circle, Maria suspects that only a hot shower and a bottle of anti-skunk dog shampoo will wash away the stench of patchouli and sandalwood that’s lingering in her nostrils. The woman in charge, a nurse practitioner in tie-dyed scrubs and with a loose gray braid sweeping down her back, had insisted they each introduce themselves twice: once with their given names, and a second time as their baby’s mother and father. The other couples, most of them very young and fond of beaded jewelry and maxi skirts (well, the women, at least), shared their babies’ names with gleeful excitement, and Maria’d bit back as much distain as possible as she’d met the parents of Windchime Amaryllis, Brixton, Hamilton, Asher, Magdalene, and Bradelyn. When the group leader—“Facilitator,” she’d corrected at one point, “because this is your experience and I am simply guiding you through”—had finally broken away from Paisley’s mothers to smile placidly at Jasper and Maria, they’d exchanged one long-suffering look before simultaneously blurting, “Nate the Napa Cabbage.”

No one hesitated to call them by their actual names, after that.

“I just don’t see the point in all-natural crunchy-granola births in the age of modern medicine,” Maria complains as they drive. Jasper raises an eyebrow in silent encouragement, and she shakes her head. “There’s a reason we have doctors and drugs, and no amount of pseudo-research by Windsock’s mom is going to scare me away from pharmaceuticals.”

He snorts. “Says the woman who signed us up for birth classes in the land of kale smoothies and birthing balls.”

“Only because the hospital’s birth classes were already full!” He bites back a grin at her obvious defensiveness, and she wrinkles her nose at him. “You’re a shit-stirrer, you know that?”

“And you’re having my baby,” Jasper reminds her. Her face warms slightly at the note of fond triumph in his tone, and she swallows against the uninvited heat as she shifts toward the window. She’s counting cat decals on the back of a Subaru and waiting for the flush to reside when he adds, “And lowering his IQ with your modern medicine, but god knows I’m not dumb enough to separate you from the sweet embrace of Big Pharma.”

Maria reaches over and smacks him lightly on the arm. “Ass,” she grumbles.

He laughs.

The sound’s warm and welcome—comfortable, even, a word Maria rarely uses these days thanks to her massively swollen midsection—and she squeezes his arm lightly as they coast to a stop at yet another traffic light. He starts a little, obviously surprised by the sudden affection, but the smile he sends her in response is blinding. Maria thinks about their morning together—Jasper snorting at the ridiculous exercises, supportively sliding his hand down the plane of her back, charming the other moms—and her stomach starts swimming. Not because she’s nervous, but because she’s suddenly, unspeakably grateful. 

She leans over to kiss him on the cheek, and he blinks blankly at her. “What’s that for?”

“The pregnancy hormones demanded a tribute,” she replies, and he rolls his eyes as the light finally turns green.

They linger close to one another anyway, her hand remaining on his arm until sensible driving conventions (and the horrifying thought of Clint Barton prosecuting their traffic ticket) demand that she release him and settle back into her own seat. Jasper glances sideways at her a few times, his expression clearly adoring and his eyes still bright, and Maria only really glances back toward the window when she feels her cheeks start to warm a second time. Every day since their walk in the park—maybe even every moment—feels a little like a gift she’s not yet earned, and she forces herself to stare at all the decorative Memorial Day flags in the lawns they pass to avoid glancing back at Jasper.

Because right now, she knows without a second thought that her face is just as open as his, revealing everything she feels in pink-cheeked Technicolor.

At some point, she might figure out how to _explain_ those feelings aloud.

Today, however, is not that day.

She’s still thinking about all that—about her accidental good fortune and Jasper’s easy forgiveness (another thing she hardly deserves)—when Jasper asks, “Do you jog?”

She jerks out of her thoughts to frown at him. “What?”

He sighs slightly. “My sisters want to buy you—well, Nate the Napa—a jogging stroller. Andrea got one when they had their first, and she says they’re worth just about every outrageous penny.” He steals a quick glance over in her direction, heavy holiday traffic be damned. “I told her you shoot at the range and go kickboxing with Peggy and that waitress friend of hers, but I wasn’t sure how you felt about running.”

There’s something in his tone she can’t quite place, and she presses her lips together briefly. “You run,” she points out.

He shrugs. “Sure. But I don’t have to run with the kid.”

“Except he’s your kid, too.” Something like uncertainty flickers briefly across his face—it’s there one second and gone the next, but it tightens both his brow and his jaw—and Maria feels something deep in the pit of her chest seize up. It aches like a physical blow, and she loses one second to shaking it off before she twists toward him. “I’m not going to lock him away in a tower when he shows up, Jasper. You won’t only get to see him when I feel like it or when I’m there to make sure you don’t, I don’t know, tell him to root for the wrong college basketball team.” He snorts slightly at that, almost deflecting, but she ignores it. “You’re his dad. That makes you one half of his life. And if you want an expensive stroller to go running with the baby, please, have your sisters buy it. Hell, I’ll probably want the break from mandatory baby cuddles by time he’s jogging age.”

They pull up to another stop light then, the last in a long line of cars, and Jasper spends a few long seconds staring at the minivan in front of them without saying a single word. Silence settles heavily, almost palpably, around them, and Maria shifts her weight slightly. She almost breaks in to offer more reassurance—different reassurance, maybe—when Jasper finally glances over at her. 

“Baby,” he says.

She frowns, her brow creasing. “What?”

“You called him a baby.”

There’s this beautiful, almost too-earnest warmth edging into his voice, and she brushes it away by rolling her eyes. “You want me to go back to calling him the parasite? Or stick with Nate the Napa until he’s Paul the Pineapple next week?”

Jasper huffs a little laugh. “It’s just the first time you’ve really called him a baby, that’s all.”

Maria’s throat immediately thickens until she swears she can’t quite breathe. She wets her lips and swallows, and when both those things fail to chase away the uninvited feeling, she glances back out the window. She’s fully aware of the heat creeping down her neck, never mind the way Jasper keeps watching her, his lips pursed in a careful little almost-smile.

Finally, she shrugs. “He’s our baby,” she says, bland as possible, and he reaches over to squeeze her hand before the light finally changes.

They pull into the Toys ‘R’ Us parking lot just a few minutes later, and Maria actually finds herself steeling her nerves against the place as she slides out of Jasper’s SUV. Aside from their brief trip to Babies ‘R’ Us and two other baby-centric stores to pick out furniture for the green bedroom (her temporary name for the cabbage’s room), she’s avoided places like this, full of children, parents, and pastels. She smoothes her shirt over the belly, adjusts her perpetually rolling waistband, and draws in a breath.

Jasper plants his hip against the front of the car and grins at her. “Remind me again why you can’t just give Dot and the dads a gift card to McDonald’s?” he asks.

“You mean aside from the fact that Steve’s trying to wean the whole family off fast food?” He snorts at her, mostly in disbelief, and plants his hand in the middle of her back as they start into the store. “Given that Nick never shows up to any of the birthday parties and Phil wouldn’t know what to buy a five-year-old—”

“Six,” Jasper corrects smugly.

She rolls her eyes. “She could be twelve and Phil _still_ wouldn’t know what to buy her unless the gift bit him in the ass. My point is, I try to be the one member of pseudo-management who isn’t a deadbeat about kid birthdays.” She shrugs. “And Bucky did help me when I almost-fainted at that hearing.”

He shoots her a sideways glance. “You mean full-on fainted.”

“I said exactly what I meant,” she retorts, and he shakes his head like a long-suffering partner as they walk into the store.

The bright white lights on white tile are almost blinding even after twenty minutes of riding around in the hot afternoon sun, and Maria squints helplessly into the cavernous wasteland of board games, Legos, stuffed animals, and Barbie dolls. Jasper immediately wanders off, distracted by some complicated Nerf weapon (he is, she decides in that moment, every seven-year-old boy’s dream), but she just hovers by the cash registers for a second, trying to decide which way is the right way. 

She’s almost found her bearings when a teenaged clerk in a bright purple polo shirt pops up next to her. “Can I help you find anything?” she chirps, and Maria swears that her whole face lights up like a Christmas tree when she realizes Maria’s pregnant. “Are you shopping for the baby? We have a sale on educational toys for babies and toddlers, if you’re—”

“Don’t ask her too many questions about the kid,” Jasper calls over his shoulder as he inspects the scope on what appears to be an off-brand Nerf sniper rifle. “She’ll run out of here without Dot’s birthday present.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “Says the man who’ll probably sign the card when we pull into Stark’s driveway,” she fires back. He waves her off, trading the rifle for a crossbow, and she glances down at the girl. “We’re looking for your My Little Pony section, if you have one.”

“Oh, we have more My Little Pony toys than I think most little girls dream of,” the clerk says with an enormous grin. “I’ll walk you over there—unless you’d rather wait for him.”

She nods toward Jasper, who’s now studying some oddly shaped device that spits out foam disks. He’s wide-eyed as a kid dropped into a candy factory, and she rolls her lips together to keep from smiling at him. “I’m sure he’ll hunt me down eventually,” she assures the clerk, and she lets the girl lead her away.

The Hasbro-branded toys—“More than just My Little Pony!” the clerk promises—are apparently all the way on the other end of the store, and Maria mostly ignores her sore back and hips as she follows the girl along. What she’s not _quite_ able to ignore is the way the clerk keeps glancing at her middle, her eyes wide and eager. She’s still resisting the urge to rest a protective hand over her belly when the clerk asks, “Are you shopping for your first?”

Maria blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You and your husband. He said you were shopping for a girl named Dot. Is she your daughter?” When Maria hesitates, mostly because her mind’s reeling slightly from the literal _pile_ of assumptions in the clerk’s questions, the girl blushes bright red and claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she blurts. “My manager’s always on me about being nosy and offending, I just like little kids so much, and—”

“Breathe,” Maria instructs, and the clerk stops in the middle of her sentence to drag in a shuddering, uneven breath. “You’re fine, okay? I’ve got thick skin, and trust me: that is _not_ the nosiest question I’ve been asked since I got pregnant.” Relief floods across the girl’s face, and Maria offers her a tiny smile. “And no, this is our first. Dot is a friend’s daughter. She’s six.”

The clerk grins. “And super cute?”

“Disgustingly so,” Maria confirms, and her new friend laughs before finally leaving her in the land of Hasbro-branded toys.

She picks out a needlessly complicated playset thing with a slide and a porch swing (because what anorexic glitter pony can live without a porch swing?) and a couple spare ponies before wandering back to the main aisle—and toward what she imagines is Jasper’s cart of Nerf weaponry. She trains her eyes straight ahead, willfully ignoring the displays of wooden puzzles, board books, and multi-colored stacking cups. Those things, she reminds herself, are for babies who already exist on this planet, who eat and sleep and spit up all over their parents before tummy time. Someday, her life will be filled with those toys and books, but not yet.

They’d picked out a set of square modular shelves for the green room, the kind where you could buy baskets perfectly sized to each little cubby and fill them with rattles and blocks. Planning ahead, Maria’d thought at the time. Bracing themselves for when their friends lavish the kid in noisy electronic toys and Muppet-branded Fisher-Price nightmares.

Except now, they’re less than two months away from needing those baskets. Hell, the furniture arrives next week.

The reality of the entire situation—that they’re about to actually be parents to a _baby_ , a little creature who’ll need toys, diapers, books, and clothes—slams into her with the full force of a tornado, and she ends up wandering up to a table displaying a wooden train set and sitting heavily on one of the tiny chairs there.

She’s still sitting, her fingers digging into her loose hair and her eyes trained on the too-white tile as she tries to breathe evenly, when she hears Jasper say, “Maria.”

His voice is gentle, calming even, and she jerks her head up hard enough that she swears her teeth rattle. He’s hovering near a display of child-friendly home science kits, and in his hand, he clutches—

She almost laughs aloud, the knot in her stomach slowly uncoiling. “A turtle?” she asks.

Jasper grins. The turtle’s dark green and fluffy, clearly soft to the touch, and when he shakes it, something in its head rattles around lightly. He pretends to walk it all the way over to the train set, Maria half-laughing all the while, and he gently settles it on the swell of her belly. She almost bats it away, but when he tilts its rattling head until its beady black eyes peer up at her, she finds herself smiling instead.

“Peggy said one time at a big office party that you liked turtles,” Jasper says, his voice low and artificially slow, just like you might expect from a lazy stuffed turtle. “Thought maybe you might want me to come live in the green room. Keep an eye on the cabbage when the time comes.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes. “Jasper—”

“Not Jasper,” he—well, the turtle—corrects, and as much as Maria tries to scoff at him again, there’s a warmth in her chest she can’t quite explain. “I’m— Uh. Well, I’m sure my name’ll be whatever the cabbage wants to call me, but for now, you can just call me Not-Jasper.”

He bumps Not-Jasper’s rounded turtle nose against her sternum, his tiny cloth head rattling again, and Maria’s only a tiny bit sorry that grasping the _actual_ Jasper by the front of his shirt sends Not-Jasper tumbling to the floor. She hauls Jasper close and kisses him, greedier and more demanding than since long before their fight, like there’s a fire raging inside her and he’s the only hope of quenching it. No, not quenching it, she thinks, but stoking it. Fanning the flames into something greater, something self-sustaining, something that she can’t snuff out with her doubts and procrastination.

He cups her face in his hands, holds her like she’s breakable even as he kisses her like she’s cast from steel, and she promises herself in that instant that no matter what happens down the line, she will _always_ have a sacred place in her heart for this moment and this man.

When they pull apart, she feels flushed and breathless, and there’s a hand-shaped wrinkle twisted in the front of Jasper’s t-shirt.

“We’re going to Dot’s birthday party,” she says once she finds her voice again, “and once we’ve been there just long enough to be polite, we’re going back to one of our houses and making a master list of all the baby stuff we need.”

Jasper purses his lips, but Maria knows from the way the corners of his eyes crinkle that he’s hiding a smile. “Might be a long list, you know.”

“Good thing I plan on us doing it in bed,” she returns, and he grins like he’s won the lottery as he collects Dot’s new ponies—and again when Maria adds Not-Jasper to the pile.


	10. June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In June, Jasper and Maria prepare for the inevitable and terrifying arrival of their baby. Most of the preparations involve free or almost free loot from their friends and colleagues. Some of it involves taking a deep breath and realizing that, ready or not, the baby’s coming anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter hints at the events of the next big story without giving anything away. There are no spoilers, but you might just gnash your teeth in worry. 
> 
> Warning for some really sexist behavior and conversation.
> 
> Thanks as always to my marvelous beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who stick with me through all the words. No really. All of them. Even the ones that come out wrong.

“Says here we can get bottle warmers for the car _and_ the house,” Jasper tells Maria, and she sighs slightly as she ditches the Babies ‘R’ Us circular from last weekend’s paper and shifts over. They’re sitting on the spare bed that’s still in the green room—mostly out of laziness, but also because the bed’s not budging until Jasper hires some able-bodied young men to drag the damn thing down to the curb—and every spare inch of the mattress is covered in a thin layer of research. There are catalogues, advertisements, a couple parenting magazines, and at least three print-outs from Amazon. They all crinkle when Maria scoots over far enough to peer at the laptop screen.

Jasper falls back onto one of his elbows and shifts the whole computer in her direction. “The car one plugs into the lighter outlet, I guess,” he says as he scrolls, “but the kitchen one—”

“What’s the point?” Maria wonders aloud, and she rolls her eyes as she glances over. “It looks like just another ploy to con unsuspecting new parents out of thirty bucks.”

He shrugs. “It looks easier than pans on the stovetop,” he points out, and she snorts as she reaches for the flyer again. “I read a thing online about how you’re not supposed to heat up milk in the microwave, so unless we’re going to combine all our saucepans to start a bottle-warming army in your kitchen, I think—”

Maria groans aloud. “I swear to god, Jasper, I am _this close_ to cutting off your Mommy blog privileges.”

Jasper grins. “Somebody’s got to read them,” he points out, and she shoots him one very severe glare before she leans over to punch the _add to registry_ button on his behalf.

In the two weeks since Dot’s birthday party—or, as he usually measures it, since Maria’s low-level panic attack at Toys ‘R’ Us—Jasper feels a little like his life’s shifted in a whole new direction. For one, the once-empty green bedroom in Maria’s house is now stocked full of furniture for the baby: crib, changing table, dresser, shelving unit with the little square baskets, hamper, and a surprise rocking chair they definitely did not pay for. He’s pretty sure that Phil’s responsible for that last addition, since it’s expensive, beautiful, and so perfectly matched to the rest of the furniture that it’s bound to be an inside job, but the last time Jasper’d asked, Phil’d just smiled placidly and wandered out of the break room. More than all that, there’s a bit of an animal theme developing, and Not-Jasper the turtle waits patiently on top of the dresser for his new best friend.

For two, the baby’s now cantaloupe-sized and growing every day. Maria complains about him constantly—she’s practically a pregnancy case-study at this point with the swollen ankles, sore everything, popped-out belly button, and chronic inability to sleep—but she also smiles when he’s comfortably wriggly. She even tolerates Jasper kissing her middle in the mornings, sometimes, and sighs slightly at his stubble against her skin.

For three, Jasper’s pretty much only headed home to water his plants and pick up clean clothes in the last two weeks.

They never really talk about it, never bridge the gap between recognizing that Jasper effectively lives in Maria’s house, but he’s pretty sure they both recognize the subtle shift toward, well, _something_. After all, he’s the one who buys the groceries, shoves furniture around in the green room in an attempt to feng shui the shit out of the cantaloupe’s future living quarters, and cleans out the sink when he finishes shaving (well, three times out of five). He’s the one who double-checks Maria’s complicated array of alarms every night—because once she’s under the covers, only an act of god or urine’s dragging her back out again—and who brings her a massive cup of coffee every morning as she’s drying her hair. He’s a constant presence in her life now—never mind in the bottom drawer of her dresser and a quarter of her closet—and every time her mouth quirks at his overnight bag, he knows she feels him just as hard.

Of course, that’d hardly stopped her from showing up at his house unannounced on the one afternoon he’d unofficially claimed for himself, the wind in her hair as she’d—

“Are you pruning my daisies?” he’d asked, golf bag over his shoulder. 

She’d glanced up from the flower bed and immediately barked out a surprised laugh. She’d plastered her hand over her mouth to try and reduce it to a pained little snort, but he’d rolled his eyes at the delight brimming across her expression. “Rhodes made me do it,” he’d defended.

Maria’d raised an extremely skeptical eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to claim that Rhodey made you golf? Because I’d believe Steve and Bucky, maybe even Victoria Hand, but the day a man who flies airplanes for fun golfs of his own volition is a cold day in—” 

“He dropped out of Stark’s charity foursome at the last minute and I was the only person with free time this weekend,” Jasper’d finally said, and Maria’d abandoned all attempts to swallow down her second round of laughter. 

He’d almost scowled at her before he’d realized how gorgeous she’d looked, the June sun golden on her skin and hair as she’d . . . Well, as she’d cackled as his expense, but the rest’d still held true. He’d ditched the bag just outside the garage to walk up and catch her by the hips, to kiss the laughter and sunshine from her lips, and she’d melted into his touch like she’d waited for him all afternoon.

“Jane and I took Darcy to lunch as a belated graduation present,” she’d said when they’d finally pulled apart, “and since I was on this side of town, I figured I’d stop by and see what you wanted to do for dinner.”

Jasper’d grinned. “Always thinking with your gut.”

“Always thinking with the baby-shaped parasite you put there, actually,” she’d corrected with a little nose-wrinkle, and she’d smacked him lightly in the arm when he’d laughed. “But instead of discovering you reading Mommy blogs in your underwear, I found out that you’re a sleeper member of Stark’s golfing foursome—”

“I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

“—who can’t keep his flowerbeds in proper working order.” When he’d rolled his eyes at her, she’d pushed him lightly toward the front door. “Go grab me whatever scissors you use in the kitchen and a glass. I’m fixing these flowers before they kill me.”

He’d frowned slightly. “That’s really how you want to spend your afternoon?” he’d asked, gesturing to the overgrown thatch of flowers that, depending on how you tipped your head, could pass either as daisies or weeds. “Because there are at least ten more interesting ideas I can think of, and only about six involve us being naked.”

Maria’d rolled her eyes. “I’m leaking in places no one ever needs to see me leak, and the hormones demand a tribute.” When he’d stared at her in mild disgust (but also curiosity, because he’d never really understood the whole “unexpected leakage” phenomenon), she’d shoved him again. “Scissors, Jasper.”

“Yes, dear,” he’d replied obediently, and she’d pretended not to grin when he’d kissed her on the cheek.

There’s still a glass of those maybe-weed daisies sitting in the middle of Maria’s kitchen table. He actually smiles just thinking about it.

“Are you even listening to me?” Maria asks suddenly, and Jasper jerks out of his thoughts to discover that she’s staring at him, brow furrowed. She’s propped up on a couple pillows, a proud mama bird in a little nest of advertisements and magazine spreads, and the second she realizes she’s regained his attention, she nods toward the computer. “Add the Diaper Genie,” she instructs.

He blinks at her. “Do I even want to know what this one is?”

“According to this article, it basically seals away all the disgusting baby stenches we’re about to experience when we change the cantaloupe’s diapers.” Jasper cringes for a half-second before he adds the innocuous-looking white device to their registry. “Add like six of the replacement bag packs, too. They’re not cheap.”

He shoots her a sideways glance. “So being able to warm up a bottle on your kitchen counter isn’t as important as hiding his diaper bombs?” 

Maria shrugs. “You want to smell his diapers for longer than the required two minutes, be my guest,” she replies, and Jasper actually considers her offer for a full ten seconds before he adds ten Diaper Genie replacement packs to their registry.

They spend another half-hour bantering back and forth just like that—Jasper discovering some popular baby accessory online (like a portable bottle sanitizer) or Maria uncovering some tried-and-tested must-have in her catalogues (like a bottle draining mat that looks like a little square of plastic grass)—until the doorbell rings. Maria groans and stretches, hands flat against her lower back and her belly arching forward, and Jasper tries not to admire her _too_ blatantly before he swings his legs off the bed. 

“I’ll get it,” he tells her.

She huffs out a frustrated little breath at him. “I’m not an invalid, Jasper, I can—”

“By the time you make it to the door, the Jehovah’s witnesses will be three houses down and armed with popsicles from the ice cream truck,” he retorts, and laughs when she swats his ass with a rolled-up magazine.

“Oh,” blurts Jane Foster—well, maybe Odinson now, Jasper’s not sure—when Jasper opens the door, and her face flushes a little when she hears her own obvious surprise. “Sorry, I texted Maria yesterday and said I’d stop by, I just assumed—”

“That she’d be the one answering the door?” Jasper replies, and she shrugs a little as she nods. Honestly, he likes Jane a lot, her sometimes-scattered scientist brain and strange love of large Swedes included, but that doesn’t really stop him from peering over her shoulder as she wanders in. “No entourage? I didn’t think the kid let you out of her sight.”

Jane laughs lightly. “We’re trying to teach Astrid that I can’t always be right there next to her. I’m just not sure me sneaking out the back while Thor’s distracting her actually counts as teaching.”

He grins. “Baby steps?” he suggests.

“Literally,” she returns, and he tries very hard not to laugh as he points her in the direction of the green room.

By the time he’s grabbed himself a glass of water and checked his cell phone for the usual drama (including the very terrifying implication that Hunter and Bobbi might be sleeping together again), Maria’s laughter is bubbling down the hallway. Jasper wonders for a moment whether she even realizes this Maria exists—the easy, open Maria, the one who teases her friends and laughs at good and bad jokes alike—but either way, he’s glad to know her. 

When he walks down to the bedroom, however, he’s less glad to discover that Maria’s removed Not-Jasper from the dresser and—

“Is this some sort of _Fifty Shades of Green_ demonstration that I shouldn’t see?” he asks.

Maria rolls her eyes at him, but Jane just grins. “Even Jasper could figure this out with minimal effort,” she promises Maria, and Jasper winks at her as he watches her configure the weird brown-and-blue patterned _thing_ she’s draped over one shoulder and across her front. He only really realizes it’s some sort of baby accessory (instead of maybe the world’s ugliest purse) when Jane shoves the stuffed turtle into the pouch part. “Obviously, the baby’ll have a lot more weight than this,” she explains as she adjusts the whole contraption, “but I think you should try it once he shows up. It’s worth every penny.”

Maria purses her lips, her expression halfway suspicious. “You really lugged Astrid around in that thing for her first couple months?”

“If Astrid’d been a less wriggly baby, I probably would’ve kept in her in it for a lot longer than that,” Jane replies with a shrug. “You can use some brands until the baby’s two or something. Lots of options.” She pauses to grin. “And according to the creepy nursing woman at the hospital—”

“Wait,” Jasper cuts in, “there are creepy nursing women at the hospital?”

“—you can actually nurse in a lot of them.” She glances down at where the turtle’s rattly head is nestled dangerously close to her chest, and Jasper works very hard not to follow her eyes. “I’d say I’ll try it next time, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be too strung-out and exhausted to care.”

“You will have two kids under two,” Maria points out, her tone straddling the very thin line between _helpful_ and _lightly smug_.

Jane groans and drags her fingers through her hair. “Don’t remind me,” she returns, but there’s laughter in her voice. “Did you see Tony’s face when we told everyone at the party? I thought he’d fall sideways into their pool and drown from shock.”

“Means you missed Rogers’s big-eyed look of envy,” Jasper informs her. Both women blink over at him, and he shrugs as much as he can with his shoulder propped against the doorframe. “Either that, or he was sizing you up before ordering a Jane-sized roasting pan, because he sure as hell spent the next twenty minutes staring.”

Maria snorts. “He exaggerates.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” He jabs his water bottle in her direction, and she rolls her eyes. “Just like with every other pregnancy announcement we’ve ever had—”

“So, two,” Maria deadpans.

“Three if you count Dot,” Jane offers.

“—Stark freaked out, Rogers and Banner started scheduling their new-baby cuddles, and both men of the Coulson household looked vaguely uncomfortable.” Maria waves him off with a little shake of her head, and he raises his hands. “Am I wrong? Because I don’t think I’m wrong.”

“Are Phil and Clint even back yet?” Jane asks suddenly, and Jasper and Maria stop exchanging frustrated little nose-wrinkles to glance over in her direction. “Peggy thought they’d be out a few days while they got everything sorted out, but it’s been almost a week and—”

“I think they’re still trying to figure out what’s actually happening,” Maria says, glancing at her phone. In the last three or four days, she’s exchanged _maybe_ six text messages with Phil, and she’s frowned at every single one. Jasper’s not exactly sure what’s wrong—something about the both of them and also Clint’s brother, but like with everything else involving Barton, there’s weird legal issues involved and Nick’s tamped down on just about every rumor that’s slithered his way—but he knows from the way Maria’s brow furrows that it’s not good. Jane purses her lips, her expression apologetic and eager at the same time, and Maria shrugs it all off. “The second I have a better idea of what’s really going on, I’ll let everyone know,” she promises. “But Phil’s not really telling me anything yet, and with the way gossip spreads around our office—”

“You mean you don’t want Darcy misunderstanding and telling everyone that Phil’s having an affair with one of the interns again?” Jane jokes, and Maria’s face is so completely horrified that Jasper can’t help but burst out laughing. She glares at him while Jane grins. “I really just wanted _something_ to tell Darcy when she texts me for the eighty-seventh time today.” She pauses. “And possibly to distract Thor.”

Jasper grins. “He already planning great things for Baby Two?” he asks.

“No, he really just wants to lay new tile in the kitchen, and I am not in the mood to live in a construction zone for a month,” Jane returns, and this time, they all laugh. 

Jasper leaves them to their conversation after that—mostly because Maria’s digging back through her piles of catalogues and he’s not in the mood to relive the _of course we need a video baby monitor, what’s wrong with you_ argument—and he only really discovers that Jane’s left after Maria lowers herself onto the couch next to him. He reaches to mute the baseball game he’s watching, but she waves him off as she rests her head on his shoulder. “A couple hours of online shopping plus a fifteen-minute social call, and I’m ready for a nap,” she complains, and he tries not to grin as he leans over to kiss her hair. She scowls at him. “I know you think this is cute, but it’s not. It’s pathetic. No adult should need a nap just to make it through her Saturday.”

“To be fair,” Jasper replies, “most adults aren’t covering for a coworker while also carrying around a cantaloupe.” She rolls her eyes at that—or maybe at the way he reaches down to press his palm to her rounded belly—but she settles more fully into his embrace. “You wanna nap, nap. I’m going to watch the Rockies beat the Cubs and then gloat about it to Hartley.”

Maria sighs as she closes her eyes. “If she’s a Cubs fan, we need to keep her away from Phil. Otherwise, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Worse than when you say the words ‘Los Angeles Dodgers’ around Rogers?”

“Rogers can at least admit when his team’s on a losing streak. Phil really believes the Cubs’ll turn a corner any day now—just like he has for the last forty-some years.” Jasper chuckles at that, shaking his head, and Maria shifts around just enough to glance up at him. “Thanks,” she says quietly.

He blinks. “For?”

“Tolerating me even in my new ‘beached whale’ form?” she suggests, and she smirks slightly when Jasper snorts at her. “And for sticking around through furniture delivery, registry building, and all the other uglier parts of having a baby.”

He smiles a little at that, his hand still pressed to her middle, and they spend a few seconds watching one another before he shrugs. “From what I understand, I get to keep seeing you naked _and_ get a baby out of the deal, so as sacrifices go . . . ”

Maria elbows him as he trails off, her face the very picture of long-suffering disgust, and he hides his grin in her hair as she settles back into his grip. “You are so lucky I like you so much,” she grumbles as she closes her eyes again.

“Yeah, I am,” Jasper agrees, and he swears she keeps smiling even when she nods off. 

 

==

 

They’re at lunch on Wednesday when Darcy suddenly pauses, her fork halfway to her mouth. “Are you intimidated by us?” she asks.

Jasper blinks. “Excuse me?”

Across the table and seated next to her friend, Jane sighs. “Darcy, this really isn’t—”

“No, hang on, I’m asking a real question,” Darcy interrupts. Little flecks of dressing drip off her fork when she gestures with it. “He’s sitting at a table with five beautiful women, and at least three of them could probably murder him with a shoe and not even break a sweat.” Natasha, Pepper, and Peggy all glance at one another before shrugging slightly. “A normal guy’d be intimidated, maybe even shaking in his boots. Which means I have to know whether _Maria’s_ guy is.”

“You know she hates the possessive,” Natasha comments lightly. 

“Also,” Jasper points out, “I’m wearing sneakers, not boots.”

Peggy leans back a couple inches to check—and, apparently, to frown at his battered jogging shoes like they’ve personally offended her—but Darcy just rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Jasper shrugs. “Maybe I do,” he admits, “but look at it this way: what would you say if I told you I wasn’t intimidated by five beautiful but slightly murderous women?” 

Darcy’s brow actually furrows as she considers the question. “I’d call you a liar and remind you that Pepper’s like a lie-sniffing dog.” Natasha snorts a laugh, but Darcy dismisses that _and_ Pepper’s slight frown with a wave of her hand. “And then, when I asked you a second time, you’d tell me the truth.”

“Because of Pepper’s lie-sniffing?” Peggy asks, almost snickering. 

“I’ll teach your date on Friday night how to sniff out your actual age,” Pepper threatens under her breath, and the smirk drops right off her friend’s face.

Darcy rolls her eyes. “No, because there is no way to sit at a table with all five of us—six once Maria’s through the line—and not want to wet yourself,” she corrects, and it’s only after she twirls her fork in a little _come on_ motion that her friends all nod. 

As Suffolk County eateries go—not that Jasper’s even comfortable using the term “eatery” in this particular instance, since it implies a certain level of edibility—the cafeteria in the judicial complex’s basement is probably his least favorite. The sandwich meats are always just a little too gray for his liking, the greens in the salads look perpetually two days past their prime, and the hot meals— Honestly, Jasper’d rather crack open a can of Chef Boyardee meat ravioli than try digesting the lump of red-brown “lasagna” that’s currently waiting for him. He pokes it experimentally with his fork, and his stomach practically flips upside down when the damn thing wriggles like jello. Or maybe like ooze dripping from the Swamp Thing, he thinks to himself, and he nudges his plate toward the middle of the table. 

At least he knows the cafeteria cookies are edible. Well, unless those wrinkly brown blobs are raisins instead of chocolate chips. He can never tell through the cling wrap.

Still, bad (yeah, like that’s _not_ the understatement of the year) food is a small price to pay for—

He stops unwrapping his pack of cookies to squint at Darcy. “Why am I here again?” he asks.

“Putting the finishing touches on the baby shower?” When he frowns slightly, she immediately shoves a mouthful of wilted salad in her mouth. “I mean, I don’t know, ask someone else. Mouth’s full.”

“Ignore her,” Peggy replies with a little shake of her head. “We’ve had the party planned for weeks—mostly thanks to Maria’s exacting specifications. We only need you to keep track of what gift came from what friend and brow-beat Maria into writing thank you cards after the fact.” Darcy scowls and swipes her fingers across her neck—the international symbol _ix-nay on the uth-tray_ , as far as Jasper’s concerned—but Peggy just rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to be complicit in another one of your lies, Darcy. Last time, I was banned from combat fit class for three months.”

Natasha and Pepper manage to hide their matching grins behind their suspiciously green chicken salad sandwiches, but Darcy huffs and crosses her arms under her ample chest. “First,” she says, “they refunded your membership the second I explained the situation, so it’s not like you really missed out on anything. And more importantly, I had no way whatsoever of knowing that they’d check to see if we were actually second-degree world championship black belts.”

“Except you were training at a tae kwon do studio,” Jane mutters.

“And that’s totally irrelevant, thank you.” Jasper snorts half a laugh, and Darcy immediately twists to shoot him a dark look. “They really just want me to admit that I’m sick of studying for the bar and want to poke you with a sharp stick.”

He raises his eyebrows. “And are you?”

“That’s need-to-know.”

“Of all people, he’s probably the one who deserves to know,” Pepper points out placidly.

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Like you didn’t participate in our ‘last person to lose a poker hand against Natasha gets to give Jasper the shovel talk’ contest last weekend,” she retorts, and the very tips of Pepper’s ears flare bright pink.

The ridiculousness of the situation—of Darcy’s defensiveness and Pepper’s freckle-faced almost-blush, never mind the official lunch invitation he’d received in Outlook and Jane’s insistence they wipe down the table before sitting—catches up to Jasper right then, and before he knows it, he bursts out laughing. It’s the kind of laugh that sits deep in your belly and almost hurts, and even when Darcy mimes flicking a cherry tomato at his head, he keeps right on trucking. He’s still snickering when Darcy decides that her little pantomime’s not quite good enough, but lucky for him, the tomato only grazes his ear.

Grazes his ear, hits something just behind him, and ricochets right back onto the table. By the time it rolls to a stop in front of Darcy’s tray, Darcy’s face is white as a sheet.

“I am so sorry,” she says all at once, both hands raised in self-defense. “Please don’t murder me in a hormonal rage before dissolving my incredible body in a vat of lime.”

“Lye,” Natasha corrects blithely.

Darcy narrows her eyes. “How do you even know that?” she demands, but Natasha just shrugs.

Standing just behind Jasper’s shoulder, her tray balanced halfway on her swollen middle, Maria smiles sweetly. “Don’t worry,” she says as she slides into the empty seat between Jasper and Pepper. “Hormonal as I am, I’m not going to kill you.”

Darcy heaves a hard sigh of relief. “That’s great, be—”

“After all,” Maria continues with a little shrug, “killing you now would rob Jane of the honor, and I think she’s earned it.”

Across the table, Jane grins. “I could give you dibs as a shower gift,” she suggests.

Maria tilts her head to one side and purses her lips. “Well, in _that_ case . . . ” she intones, and Darcy groans as she buries her face in her hands.

The rest of the table laughs at that—and then at the way Darcy starts whimpering about her bar class at a pitch that only dogs can hear—and Jasper leans back in his seat as he listens to their regular banter rise up all around him. He’s always liked Maria’s friends, but in the abstract, the way somebody who’s never driven a Mercedes can still really like the brand. Spending actual time at their lunch table just confirms everything he’s always suspected about them—their humor, their good nature, their unfailing loyalty to Maria—and Jasper—

Well, he’s not the kind of guy who wants to win over his girlfriend’s inner circle. He’s not that desperate.

But the victory still feels pretty good.

He’s still smiling to himself when Maria tips into his personal space and steals half a cookie from his little three-pack. “I’d offer you half of my sandwich, but Herman the Honeydew demands a sacrifice with Dijon mustard and extra onions.”

Jasper wrinkles his nose. “If that’s the case, his mother better brush her teeth twice before she comes within three feet of me.” She nudges him in the ribs slightly, and he grins at her. “And his name’s Herman this week?”

She shrugs. “Amy’s between summer camps, so Bruce brought her around to my office. After she thoroughly molested my stomach, she suggested we name the honeydew after her boyfriend.”

“How’d Bruce take that news?”

“Given that she’s been obsessing about the same kid since before Thanksgiving? I’d guess there’s a background check request form on your desk.” Jasper actually laughs at that, and Maria leans her weight against his shoulder as she steals the second half of the cookie. “The girls haven’t broken you yet, have they?” 

He blinks a little at that, but Maria just jerks her head toward the other women—and, apparently, to Darcy’s seven-point rant on the uselessness of the hearsay rule after _Crawford_ , whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. He shrugs. “They’re mostly okay.”

“Mostly?”

“Well, Darcy did assault me with a cherry tomato not five minutes ago,” he reminds her, and Maria grins at him before she returns to her own lunch—and, apparently, her _two_ ham sandwiches with extra mustard.

Except she’s barely picked up the first one when a man behind them huffs, “You know what I see what I look over at that table? A criminal waste of potential, that’s what.”

The line’s clearly an aside, one throwaway comment in part of a longer conversation, but something about the stranger’s disgusted tone immediately sets Jasper’s nerves on edge. Next to him, Maria pauses, her shoulders tight, and he watches as she clenches her jaw. “Ignore it,” she mutters, and bites into her sandwich.

“But—” Jasper starts, but she cuts him off with a sharp glance. At her other shoulder, Pepper’s fingers twitch slightly against her water glass. She flicks her eyes in Jasper’s direction for one split second, and he shrugs.

At least they’re unified in their uselessness, he thinks bleakly, and reaches for his cup of lukewarm cafeteria coffee.

The man behind him keeps fucking talking.

“You see it from the government attorney types all the time,” he continues, and Jasper pushes his chair back just far enough that he’s able to catch the guy’s agitated little hand-toss in his peripheral vision. As nice as his suit and shoes are, his manner’s scattered all over the place, like he’s an awkward teenager in his prom rental. “They think they’re going to do good. I don’t know, maybe they even _believe_ they’re going to do good. I’ve heard that from a few of them. Save the world, who cares about the bottom line, that sort of thing.” 

His companion, a silver-haired man in a black suit and burgundy tie, sighs quietly. “That’s enough, Justin.”

“Enough? No, see, enough is Maria Hill when she’s in the courtroom. Remember when I covered for Loki in that rape case? I don’t think a motions hearing’s supposed to leave you hot and bothered, but Hill’s like a five-alarm fire at a gas station.” He shakes his head. “Do you know what our firm could do with somebody who’s got half her chops?”

“Could we hire that person in your place?” his companion asks blandly.

The asshole—Justin, Jasper reminds himself, not that the name rings any bells—laughs uproariously, and Jasper grinds his teeth together to keep from flinging his coffee cup directly at the back of the guy’s head. “My point,” he presses, hardly missing a beat, “is that what we’re seeing over at that table is a profound waste of potential. Frittered away, first to the government and now to— What? A baby? I mean, I know Stark elected to try out the whole ‘cute and cuddly daddy’ schtick, but since Hill’s not the type to ride a publicity stunt to the top, you’ve gotta figure—”

Someday, in some other universe, Jasper’s sure he discovers what exactly Justin-the-asshole’s figured out about Maria.

In real life, the guy’s sentence ends in a squeak because Maria flies out of her chair, walks right over to his table, and drags him up out of his seat by the back of his suit jacket.

“Would you like to repeat that to my face?” Maria demands, and Justin wriggles like he thinks he can slip out of his waistcoat and head straight for the hills with just a little elbow grease. Her eyes narrow. “Well?”

“I—” he starts, and he gulps down the rest of the sentence when Maria tightens her grip. He twists a little, trying to glance over his shoulder at his lunch companion, but the other man just shrugs. Justin gulps again. “Maria— Can I call you Maria?”

Maria’s jaw twitches. “No.”

“Yeah, you’re right, that’s too familiar. I only really know you as Miss Hill. I should call you that.” Justin nods so hard that he skews his glasses, but Maria just raises her eyebrows. “What I was saying, Miss Hill, wasn’t— It probably sounded like a reflection on you, but it was really just about government attorneys in general. And attorneys who decide to get pregnant instead of staying in the courtroom, because if they’re as good as you are, they really should—”

Maria twists her fistful of jacket hard enough that Justin almost collides with her, and for a moment, the two of them just stand there, him glancing furtively over his shoulder at his bored-looking companion and Maria glaring so hard that Jasper half expects the guy’s head to explode. 

“Listen very carefully,” Maria finally half-growls, “because I am only going to say this once. My decisions to work for the government, to have a baby, and to do anything else I please are _absolutely_ my own. And if I ever hear you say anything remotely like this again, I will sic Pepper on you so fast that your head will literally spin.”

Justin’s head immediately snaps over to where Pepper’s sitting at their table. There’s fire and ice somewhere under her placid little smile, and when she finger-waves across the ten feet of distance, all the remaining color drops right out of Justin’s face.

Maria ignores his reaction to cross her arms. “Do I make myself clear?” Justin squeaks out a pathetic little almost-answer, and she cocks her head slightly. “Sorry, I didn’t quite hear you.”

“Yes, absolutely, a hundred times yes, please just let me finish my burger in peace,” Justin blurts all at once.

She smiles. “Good.” She waits until Justin practically throws himself back into his chair to nod over at his lunch companion. “Erik.”

“I do try to house train them, Maria, but it is so very difficult,” the other man complains, but he winks at Maria, too.

A smattering of other people nearby—mostly women, actually—clap once Maria turns back toward their table, but she waves them all off in favor of sliding back into her seat. There’s color high in her cheeks, and from the way she rubs the lower half of her belly, Jasper’s pretty sure she’s not the only person who’s still worked up by Justin-the-asshole’s speech. Natasha slides Maria the last of her water, and she drinks it in a couple hungry swallows while Jasper rubs a hand along her back.

“How tempted were you to punch him?” Peggy asks once Maria’s breathing returns to normal. Pepper and Jane both shoot her annoyed little glances, but she shrugs. “What? I was impressed she didn’t. I probably would have thrown a stapler at him, if it were me.”

Darcy frowns. “Where would you have gotten a stapler?”

Peggy smirks. “I have my ways,” she says cryptically, and smacks Darcy’s hand when the other woman reaches for her purse.

Maria huffs out half a laugh, and for the first time since she’d dropped back into her chair, her fingers loosen their death grip on Natasha’s water glass. “The last thing our office needs is one of its Chief Assistants in county lock-up for punching another attorney in the face.”

“But other than that?” Natasha prompts.

Maria smirks. “I would’ve used the momentum from all this extra weight to lay him out on the floor,” she replies blithely, and Jasper allows her to exchange high-fives with both Darcy and Peggy before he leans in to kiss her. 

 

==

 

“Well, look what the cat finally dragged in,” Hartley says, and Jasper flips both her and her smirking wife off as he drops into his usual seat at their table. “Glad you decided to grace us with your presence. We were thinking about calling in the cavalry.”

At the next table over, Melinda May pauses in the middle of a conversation with her prepubescent posse to shoot Hartley a dark look, and Hartley raises her hands. “Not the proverbial cavalry, Melinda. The _actual_ cavalry. With horses.”

Rhodes frowns slightly. “Where’d that nickname come from anyway?”

“She’d tell you, but then she’d have to kill you,” one of Melinda’s hangers-on explains, and Melinda rolls her eyes as the two girls at her table exchange overly enthusiastic high-fives.

“Baby lesbians,” Victoria mutters under her breath, and Hartley wrinkles her nose as she reaches for the basket of chips.

Except Jasper beats her to the punch and immediately slides it away. “First, and ignoring the fact that you think your ten years of horseback lessons somehow associates you with the actual cavalry—”

“If you bring up that damn horse of hers, I’m leaving,” Victoria warns.

“—I’m fifteen minutes late and I brought bar coupons, so you can’t really complain.” Hartley purses her lips at that, her face suddenly considerate, and Jasper smirks as he steals a generous portion of their spinach dip. “And second, Maria had another set of contractions, and I didn’t want to leave until we were sure they were the fake kind.”

“Braxton Hicks.” When Jasper cranes his head up to glance over his shoulder, Bobbi Morse shrugs at him. “They’re called Braxton Hicks, not ‘fake contractions.’ At least, according to google.”

Rhodes raises his eyebrows. “And why are you googling baby stuff?”

“Because one of Mack’s army of sisters is pregnant, and if I don’t look it up for him, I end up hearing about the horrors of the female body.” Jasper snickers into his waiting beer—lucky for him, his friends know his usual order like the back of their hands—and Bobbi jabs a finger into his upper arm as she sits down next to him. “Laugh all you want, but trust me: you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s what she said,” Hartley notes offhandedly. When they all glance over at her, she blinks. “What? You walked me right into that one.”

Rhodes tosses Victoria a sideways glance. “Did you marry her voluntarily?”

“Sadly, there weren’t as many lesbians at our college as I’d hoped,” Victoria replies seriously, and Hartley scowls at her as she reclaims the basket of chips. 

There’s a noisy victory cheer from over at the pool table, and Jasper glances over his shoulder just in time to watch Hunter and Idaho chest-bump like their lives depend on it. Mack and Trip huff and roll their eyes at the show of unsportsmanlike gloating, but they also start resetting the table for a rematch like nothing ever happened. 

At his shoulder, Bobbi leans back in her chair, her expression weirdly appreciative as she watches Hunter engage in a borderline obscene victory dance. When Jasper glances back over at Hartley, she just shakes her head.

“You have any idea what’s setting Maria—or at least, Maria’s uterus—off so much lately?” Victoria asks. Her plate’s a hot wing graveyard, and she’s in the process of finishing off the last of the blue cheese dressing with her celery sticks. “Every time we talk to you, it’s some new pregnancy horror story. Contractions, insomnia, leakage—”

“You know, I can see Mack’s point about not wanting to do the research,” Rhodes cuts in.

Victoria ignores him. “She’s had pretty much a picture-perfect pregnancy up until now,” she presses, “but from the sounds of it, everything’s headed downhill fast.”

Hartley snorts lightly. “She’s less than a month away from popping out a kid with Sitwell’s head attached to him. My body’s having sympathy twinges just thinking about it.” She grins when Bobbi almost chokes on her next mouthful of beer. “Not that I disagree about the whole ‘downhill fast’ thing.”

“Supportive,” Victoria mumbles. 

“Consider it payback for insulting my horse,” Hartley fires back, but Victoria’s scowl immediately dries up when her wife leans over and pecks her on the cheek.

They lean together like that for a couple seconds, Hartley’s arm along the back of Victoria’s chair and her forehead resting lightly on Victoria’s temple, before Jasper sighs and shakes his head. “She’s mostly just uncomfortable,” he explains. “She’s miserable when she tries to sleep, she complains about being a beached whale, and yeah, some of the more recent developments are just weird enough that she’d rather hide in the bathroom than talk about them.” Rhodes tips his pint glass toward Jasper in a little salute of gratitude, and Jasper grins slightly. “Plus, you add in all the stress at work and Phil being in one day and out the next—”

Bobbi’s brow crinkles. “Isn’t he the person who’s supposed to be covering for Maria when she goes on leave next month?”

“One of the three, yeah.” She frowns, about to jump in with the obvious follow-up, but Jasper just holds up his hands. “The Phil thing’s a long, complicated story that I’m still not sure I totally understand, and I’d rather not retell it if I can avoid it.”

Rhodes snorts. “I’ll drink to that,” he toasts, and Jasper mimes clinking their glasses together across the table.

“And are you ready for the baby?” 

Victoria tosses the question out there as a throwaway, same as asking about a movie somebody just saw or the weather, but her dark eyes are piercing as she stares across the table at Jasper. Hartley releases a sigh that suggests they’ve already talked about that very question (maybe at length), and at Jasper’s side, Bobbi purses her lips as she reaches for the platter of chicken wings. 

“I guess?” he answers after a couple seconds of heavy silence. When Victoria’s expression tightens like she’s fighting against a frown, he shrugs. “I mean, we’re still counting on the baby shower next weekend to score us a couple of our last big purchases, but the crib and the bassinette are all ready to go, there’s a couple clean outfits packed away in our hospital bag—”

“Our?” Rhodes repeats, eyebrows raised.

Jasper rolls his eyes instead of answering. “—and with the extra bed finally out on the curb, the nursery’s pretty much squared away. At this point, all that’s left is Maria setting up her iPod playlist for the big day and the last two or three sessions of our crunchy granola birth class.”

Bobbi immediately grins. “That last couple name their baby yet?”

“Last they bickered in front of us, they’ve narrowed it down to either Khaleesi or Cassiopeia.” She laughs, her long curls bouncing as she shakes her head, and Jasper grins as he glances back at Victoria. “I’m not saying we haven’t scrambled any in the last month,” he admits, “but overall, we’re pretty set.”

Victoria nods slightly, her lips still pursed into a clenched little almost-frown. “I never doubted that you’d be physically ready to have the baby with you and bring him home. I more meant whether you’re ready emotionally.”

Rhodes sighs. “Victoria—”

She instantly raises both hands. “I know I’ve been a jackass through parts of this process,” she says, pausing only long enough to glare at Hartley and her little hum of agreement, “and I’m sorry about that. Spend enough time stopping seventeen-year-olds from screwing up their lives, you forget that your friends _aren’t_ seventeen and are instead perfectly capable of making their own choices.” She leans forward slightly, her hands folding around the stem of her wine glass. “But you’re also our best friend, and we care about you. And part of that means asking whether you’re ready for the biggest change of your life.”

“Not,” Hartley adds, “to scare you or anything.”

Victoria huffs out a tiny sigh. “I’m starting to think we need separate social circles.”

“You joined this one on your own volition,” Hartley reminds her—but she also loops her arm along the back of Victoria’s chair again, and brushes her wife’s shoulder with her thumb.

For a moment, they’re lost a little in their own world of raised eyebrows and fond little almost-smiles, and Jasper’s allowed to just think about his answer. Truth is, he’s considered the question a hundred-plus times in the last month or so, and every time, the best response he’s able to cobble together is a resounding _I don’t really know_. Some nights, when Maria’s tossing and turning jolts him out of a dead sleep, he sits bolt upright, his pulse rushing in his ears, afraid that Maria’s smacked him on purpose and the baby’s on his way.

Because the second the baby’s born, everything changes.

He rubs his thumb along the etched lettering on his pint glass as he thinks about the last couple months with Maria, a roller-coaster ride that’s only now slowing down for the final couple bends. Even when he tries to be bitter about the hard times—the radio silences, the fights, the walls Maria bricks up around her—his chest still feels warm and full. Like his life finally makes sense with Maria Hill in it, as stupid and sentimental as that maybe sounds. Like all their struggles are just some sort of weird prerequisite for the rest of their relationship, the one where baby makes three.

He knows it’s naïve to assume that they’ll just weather the rest of the storms together without any more problems. That’s the kind of shit you think when you’re in love for the first time at eighteen, not about to become a dad at thirty-eight.

But deep down, under all his practicality, Jasper believes in the three of them. He believes that, no matter how hard the next month—and really, the eighteen-plus years after that—are, they’ll somehow come out the other side unscathed.

Or they’ll be paying Herman the Honeydew’s therapy bills until well after they retire, but Jasper’s pretty sure that’s par for the course.

And _then_ , he thinks about Maria and that one Saturday of shitty charity golf puns, and he actually chuckles to himself.

Across the table, Victoria narrows her eyes. “Have you finally had a psychotic break?” 

He grins. “No, I’m mostly just thinking about how much money you’re going to lose on your little _will Jasper be able to handle parenthood_ side bet.” She, Hartley, and Bobbi immediately exchange a set of panicked _who told him?_ looks, but Jasper ignores it to lean back in his chair. “And to answer your question: yeah, I’m ready for the kid to come. I won’t pretend that I’m never afraid, and I won’t say it’ll be a cakewalk. But after the last couple months, I think we’re both ready for this next part.”

Something warm and welcome glimmers in Victoria’s eyes when she nods at him, and at her side, Hartley’s face breaks out into an enormous grin. “That’s what we hoped you’d say,” she says, and she pushes back her chair while Bobbi whistles loud enough that it hurts.

Jasper’s allowed just enough time to blink twice before half the bar is suddenly converging on their table, and it’s only as the waitress and Rhodes work to clear away all their plates and glasses that he really realizes what’s happening. Because suddenly, Melinda May and her entourage are swarming their table armed with various baby-themed items—a bright blue plastic table cloth, for instance, and an enormous box of Pampers—and Hartley’s dragging a box of cigars out of the depths of her “utilitarian investigator bag” (because god forbid she call the damn thing a purse). Victoria ducks under her chair and emerges with a couple of bottles of champagne, the waitress and Rhodes return from the bar with a stack of plastic wine glasses, and Hunter—

“You realize you’re making me look bad, don’t you?” Hunter grumbles as Mack heaves an enormous, shoddily-wrapped box into the middle of the table. “Because I’m supposed to be the one around here who handles the heavy lifting, and yet—”

Mack shoots him a withering half-glare. “You complained all the way in from the car that your back hurt and somebody needed to take pity on you.”

Over where she’s helping Victoria fill glasses, Bobbi snickers, and Hunter shifts uncomfortably. “I just wanted to see Trip break a sweat for once,” he defends.

Trip grins. “Not what you said when you practically threw the box at Mack,” he returns, and he laughs when Hunter flips him off by pretending to scratch his nose.

Jasper half-expects the bickering to continue—or, worse, for Idaho to jump in and point out the way Hunter keeps glancing back at Bobbi for approval—but before anybody’s able to get a word in edgewise, somebody hammers a fork against a glass. When Jasper glances over, he discovers that Hartley’s standing on a chair, her pint glass filled almost to the brim with champagne and a big, shit-eating grin on her face.

Everybody shuts the hell up right away, and they immediately join in on the grinning when they realize that the full thrust of her attention’s focused on Jasper.

“A little blonde birdie friend of mine recently informed me that the male equivalent of a baby shower is something called a diaper party,” she begins, and pauses just long enough to allow Bobbi a playful little mock bow. “But knowing Jasper—and, more than that, knowing just how many of Jasper’s friends will be at his girlfriend’s actual baby shower—I figured the only way we’d be able to celebrate him is if we caught him off guard. And brought something other than diapers and beer, because he’s a picky bastard who’d never forgive us for buying him something ‘commercial.’” 

She winks at that, her grin growing until it almost overtakes her whole face, and Jasper works hard to muster up an annoyed eye-roll. Not because she’s not deserving, but because there’s heat crawling up his neck and onto his face, and his throat feels tight all of a sudden.

Standing next to him, Rhodes pats him on the shoulder and smiles.

“Now, I could go on for hours about how great a guy Jasper is and about how much he deserves all the happiness in the world,” Hartley continues with a little shrug, “but I’m pretty sure everybody who’s here is fully aware of that fact. So instead, I will just say congratulations, pass out the champagne, and force him to endure no fewer than a dozen hugs from all you assholes.”

Idaho immediately raises his hands. “Hugging was not part of the deal,” he says as he steps back, but he grins when Mack drags him into a light, friendly head-lock.

Hartley sighs and shakes her head, but she raises her glass anyway. “To Jasper Sitwell,” she says, her voice as warm and sincere as Jasper’s ever heard it, “the best future father I know.”

The whole group erupts into uneven applause at that point, and Jasper pretends that he’s not swallowing roughly as he accepts a plastic glass from the helpful waitress. He toasts with a couple people standing around him before downing the champagne in one heavy swallow, and his closest friends cheer as they hand over a second glass. The bubbles seep right into his brain as he accepts hugs from the wide variety of friends and almost-friends who’d somehow filled the bar without him noticing: Melinda, Skye, the juvenile clerks and Ward, sure, but also a couple of his old friends from the police academy, Detectives Howlett and Munroe, and even a grinning Judge Smithe.

“Everyone’s _so_ happy for you,” Smithe says honestly, her hands still gripping his upper arms. “I think everyone Isabelle asked chipped in for the gift.”

He blinks dumbly. “You all chipped in for that giant box?”

“A giant box you should open,” the judge instructs, and actually shoves him back toward the table.

Ripping off the ream and a half of wrinkled, mismatched baby shower paper reveals a complicated, expensive car seat—possibly the most expensive one he and Maria’d considered during their shower registry blitz, one that converts over time so you’re not conned into buying a replacement after the first couple months. Jasper stands in front of it for a long time once the paper’s on the floor, his mouth hanging open and probably attracting flies.

After a full ten seconds of silent staring, Bobbi sighs and rests her elbow on his shoulder. “We figured it was kind of a lot,” she admits, “but Victoria and I did a ton of research, and this one has the best reviews. Plus, you can buy a second base to attach it to and just keep one in each car. The woman at Babies ‘R’ Us said it cuts down on a lot of hassle.”

From where he’s standing on Bobbi’s other side, Hunter shrugs. “Plus, look at it this way. Because it’s compatible with the stroller that all Maria’s friends are— Ow!” He jerks his whole body away from Bobbi like she’s stung him, and Bobbi hardly waits for him to recover before she smacks him upside the back of the head a second time. “Jesus, Bob, what are you—”

“The stroller?” Bobbi asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, I _know_ I was talking about the bloody stroller, I—” When Bobbi cocks her head to one side, all the color immediately drains from Hunter’s face. He loses a second to glancing between Jasper, Bobbi, and the giant car seat box before he finally forces a little grin. “What I meant to say,” he finally corrects, “is that if you bought a particular brand of stroller, this car seat would hook into it as part of a complete system. Which isn’t to say you’re getting that stroller, but that you _could_.”

Hartley sighs. “Subtle.”

“Yeah, well,” Hunter grumbles, but he also allows Bobbi to physically manhandle him away from the table before he’s able to ruin any other secrets.

There’s a few more hugs after that, including Mack (who squeezes Jasper until his bones creak) and Rhodes (who calls him “brother” in the most painfully genuine way before releasing him). Victoria at least allows him to finish off his third glass of champagne before she, too, sweeps in for the kill. She holds onto him for a long time, and when she finally lets go, she’s so reluctant that Jasper wonders whether she thinks he’ll fall to pieces without her. “Good on you,” she says, and she squeezes his elbow as she walks away.

He waits until she’s joined Melinda May’s group to glance over at Hartley. “She okay?” 

Hartley shrugs. “We just upgraded her emotion chip, and she’s not handling all these new feelings very well.” Jasper laughs at that, shaking his head—at least, until Hartley reaches over and clasps him hard on the shoulder. “For what it’s worth,” she says, “I’m proud of you.”

He grins. “For getting my not-quite-girlfriend pregnant?” 

She rolls her eyes. “For pulling yourself back together after you lost your dad.” As light as she keeps her tone, Jasper can still hear the sincerity that lurks beneath, and his mouth dries out a little from it. He swallows weakly and tries hard to hold onto his smile. “I know how much it hurt,” she says, her voice a little softer now, “and I know how much you still feel that loss every day. Especially since being there for him—for your whole family, really—meant rebooting your life. Starting over from scratch.” She shrugs slightly, her expression soft. “But as much as I liked the guy I knew before you went through that, I’m proud to know the guy you became. And I’m glad to call that guy my friend.”

She ends her sentence with a tiny, genuine smile—the kind that strips away all her usual walls of bullshit and transforms her back into the nervous twenty-something he’d met at the police academy—and despite the lump in the back of his throat, Jasper smiles back. “You know I’m going to hug you now, right?” he asks.

She sighs. “Your kid’s not even here yet and you’re already a soft touch,” she complains, but when he wraps his arms around her, she hugs back just as hard.

 

==

 

“Any pointers for me, since you’re practically Super Dad these days?”

The glare from the June sun is almost blinding out on Maria’s back patio, and Bruce Banner shields his eyes from it as he glances over at Jasper. Well, actually, Bruce _tries_ to shield his eyes, but the second he raises his hand, Astrid Odinson grunts and reaches for it, her sticky fingers wriggling in mid-air. “Oh, these are yours now?” he asks with a smile, and Astrid blinks at him before redoubling her efforts.

Jasper laughs. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to tease them.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “You sound like Tony,” he replies, but his voice and smile are about as warm and sunny as the afternoon, and that’s a pretty damn high bar.

Delighted laughter suddenly cascades out the open back door and the living room windows, and all three of them (Astrid included) crane their necks to glance back at where Maria’s baby shower is finally in full swing. When Jasper’d last checked—or when he’d grabbed his beer and ducked outside, depending on who you asked—Peggy’d been flipping liquor bottles behind her back and mixing pretty much every drink imaginable courtesy of all the dusty, untouched bottles in Maria’s liquor cabinet. She’d even whipped up one of those kiddy cocktails for a wide-eyed Amy Jimenez, who’d clutched her glass like the Holy Grail and thanked her six times.

“I’ve never seen a seven-year-old so excited to be included in a baby shower,” Bruce’d admitted at the time.

Jasper’d shrugged as he’d handed the guy a beer. “At least somebody here’s excited,” he’d retorted, and clinked their bottles together as Bruce’d snorted.

In truth, Jasper’s pretty sure that most of the guests, Bruce included, are pretty excited about the whole shower thing, if only because it’s a chance to celebrate Maria and the impending Swiss chard. Plus, Maria’d placed an absolute ban on _stupid belly-measuring games and anything remotely related to diaper humor_ and had required their hostesses order in barbeque for lunch, ensuring that literally everyone they’d invited showed up. He’d actually stood stupid and slack-jawed at a couple of the guests—Sharon the intern, Carol Danvers, Melinda May, _Hartley_ —but he’d still managed to accept their gifts and congratulations with a warm smile.

His sister Andrea, on the other hand, had smacked him hard enough to bruise before leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. “Now, introduce me to your baby mama,” she’d instructed once he’d finished rubbing his upper arm, “and I’ll see if she’s worthy of my favorite big brother.”

“You mean your only big brother?” Lisbeta’d chimed in from behind her.

Andrea’d scowled. “It sounds nicer when I say it my way,” she’d retorted, and Jasper’d rolled his eyes at both of them before guiding them—and his mother—over to meet Maria.

By the time they’d all sat down to eat, his sisters’d flanked Maria on the couch and laughed at all her jokes.

Small favors, he guesses.

Astrid studies Bruce’s hand with a sort of single-minded focus, her tiny fingers gripping his knuckles, and he chuckles at her as he brushes her windswept hair out of her face. “If you’d stop trying to eat the spicy pickles, we wouldn’t have to be out here,” he tells her, “but you clearly inherited your stubbornness from Thor, didn’t you?”

Astrid tilts her face up at him, curious, and Jasper snorts at her tiny, puzzled expression. “And she’s apparently just as easy to confuse.” 

Bruce grins. “Don’t let Thor fool you. The longer I work with him, the more I’m convinced he uses the ‘confused by everything around him’ act as a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Jasper raises his eyebrows. “I thought that was more Clint’s deal.”

“No, Clint prefers the tried-and-true ‘I can’t handle three-syllable words’ method,” Bruce retorts, and Jasper almost chokes on his next mouthful of beer. His little sputter leaves Bruce grinning, and for only the third or fourth time, he realizes exactly why the guy’s such a good match for his husband. “And before you ask: yes, Tony’s tried _both_ tricks to avoid doing work. Pepper just usually hides his cell phone until he promises to stop dodging his responsibilities.”

“How’s that work out for him?”

Bruce shrugs. “There’s a reason we own so much Apple stock,” he replies casually, and Jasper laughs again. Bruce’s laugh lines crinkle as he swigs his own beer, and they stick around even as he swaps the bottle for Astrid’s waiting sippy cup and offers her a drink. He waits until she flops happily against his shoulder to glance back at Jasper. “I’m not Super Dad.”

Jasper frowns. “What?”

“You said that I’m practically Super Dad, but trust me when I say I’m anything but.” He hikes Astrid up on his hip slightly, his whole body rocking in an unconscious little sway. “Half the reason I brought Amy along instead of just dropping off the gift myself is that she and Miles keep driving each other up the wall. I can’t even figure out who provokes who most the time, and the longer I listen to them fight, the more my temper just . . .”

He shakes his head slightly, his eyes dropping down to the toddler on his hip, and Jasper thinks for a moment that he catches a little flash of disappointment crossing the other man’s face. He swirls his beer around in the bottom of the bottle for a second, unsure what exactly he’s supposed to say. Finally, he just shrugs. “Even Super Dad’s allowed an off day.”

Bruce snorts. “Or an off week?”

“Hey, it’s summer break. Kids are home all day. I figure an off month’s probably still acceptable.” Bruce chuckles a little at that, and Jasper grins. He’s proud when the expression lasts more than just a couple seconds—and when the weird nervousness that sits in the middle of his stomach leaves him only slightly nauseated. “You at least know what you’re doing,” he says after a couple seconds, and Bruce frowns as he glances back over. “You did the foster parent thing before you decided to keep one, upped the number to three because you’re a saint—”

“Or a glutton for punishment,” Bruce suggests.

“No, the punishment part’s your husband, not your kids,” Jasper shoots back, and he’s only a little surprised when Bruce chuckles. “From what I can tell,” he presses, “you’ve got most of the parenting stuff under control. Me, I’m going in blind, and I sometimes start to . . . ”

He’s not sure what word he wants, but when he hides his uncertainty in another swig of his beer, Bruce just smiles at him. The wind ruffles his messy hair, and for a second, Jasper’s able to pretend that they’re more than just workplace acquaintances but actual friends, people who share these kinds of insecurities all the time. They’re not, of course, but the thought’s comforting.

Jasper thinks he maybe needs a couple more guy friends.

“I’ve never started from the beginning,” Bruce finally says, his voice just quiet enough that it’s almost lost on the summer breeze. “Even with Amy, I know what variables I’m dealing with. Her history with her mom, her learning disabilities and troubles at school, the issues she’s working through at therapy— She carried all of that when she arrived, just waited for us to unpack it. Miles and Teddy are the same. Worse, maybe, given their ages.”

“Yeah, but even going in with a laundry list means you’re starting with a list, you know? You’ve at least got some bullet points, and I—” The words stick in the back of Jasper’s throat a little, and he shakes his head. “I guess I just need to know how to _not_ screw it up. Because I could be so inept that he needs therapy by the time he’s three. If he’s not in toddler jail, at least.”

“When kids under ten commit serious crimes, we usually just open a child welfare case on them,” Bruce says helpfully, and he shrugs when Jasper shoots him a dark look. “I just didn’t want you to worry too much about toddler jail.”

“Good, because I’m really looking forward to meeting the special prosecutor who’ll step in to deal with _that_ case,” Jasper grumbles, and swigs the last of his beer.

Bruce laughs for a moment, his free hand raised in defense until Astrid drops her sippy cup on the ground to grab his fingers and clutch them close to her chest. She closes her eyes immediately, almost like Bruce’s hand is some kind of fleshy security blanket, and Bruce’s whole expression softens as he gazes down on her. Jasper’s just about to point out how badly the guy needs a baby—or maybe just a grandkid, which is about the last thing the dad of a fourteen-year-old wants to hear—when Bruce sighs quietly. “I can’t prevent the laundry list,” he says, and for the first time, Jasper hears real hurt in his voice. “I can help Amy with her spelling, spend three hours a night star-gazing with Miles while we talk about his uncle, sit up with Teddy when his insomnia hits, but at the end of the day, I’m just managing what’s already there. Helping mitigate the damage, but unable to _stop_ it.” 

Jasper rolls his lips together. “You think it’s easier, starting from the beginning?”

The corner of Bruce’s mouth kicks up into a tiny grin. “I’m not sure the word ‘easy’ belongs in any discussion about parenting, but I think—” He pauses, his throat bobbing momentarily, and finally glances back over at Jasper. “I’d never trade any of our kids in for a blank slate. But sometimes, there’s nothing I want more than to jump back in time and grab them before the worst of it started.”

He shakes his head slightly, his thumb tracing the smooth little swell of Astrid’s chin, and Jasper can’t stop his tiny grin. “Your kids?” he asks.

Bruce snorts and rolls his eyes. “You repeat that to Tony,” he threatens, “and I’m telling Maria about toddler jail.”

Jasper laughs aloud at that, and his voice carries for about two seconds before Astrid jerks awake, blinks blearily at Bruce, and immediately bursts into tears. Bruce chuckles and hushes her, but she pushes at his chest like he’s the new public enemy number one, and he awkwardly excuses himself as he trots back inside with the fussy baby. Jasper smiles slightly as the screen door bangs shut behind him, but then he’s alone with his thoughts in the bright summer sun.

He tries to imagine Bruce’s brand of parenthood, one where his son’s a fully formed little person with hopes, dreams, and aspirations by the time Jasper finally meets him, but he realizes within a few seconds that the thought actually hurts his heart. As much as he wonders about screwing up his kid, he also can’t help but imagine that first moment when his son blinks up at him—or his first words, his first steps, his first _everything_. Bruce’ll share hundreds of firsts with Miles and, eventually, with the other two kids he usually swears he won’t keep, but—

Well, in all honesty, Jasper’s greedy. He wants every first to be theirs, something precious for him and Maria.

He’s still thinking about all that when an arm snakes around his waist, and he smiles as Maria slips into his grip. “You eat enough barbeque to feed a whole society of cavemen?”

“You keep talking to me like that, you can sleep outside like a caveman,” Maria warns, but she rests her cheek against his upper arm when he laughs. “I think your sisters are done regaling me with all the horrific things that are about to happen to my body if you want to come in for cake and presents.”

He blinks. “We have cake?”

She frowns. “How did you miss the enormous cake Victoria and Isabelle brought in? They’re your friends.”

“Yeah, but they’re only nice to me about once a year. I’m not used to these random acts of kindness.” She rolls her eyes at that, her skin half-golden in the sunlight, and he swears the only reason he’s not treated to a witty retort is because he leans in to kiss the corner of her mouth. When he backs away, she chases his lips, her head tilting for a proper kiss, and for one glorious second, Jasper can’t help the joy that wells up in his chest.

He’s scared sometimes, sure, but he’s excited, too. Excited, overwhelmed, and stupidly in love with Maria Hill. 

She stays pressed against him even when they finally stop kissing, her fingers twisted in his shirt while his hand’s spread possessively over her lower back. “Come help me mock what I am sure is a truly _shocking_ number of blue onesies.”

He grins. “Just remember to be surprised about the complicated car seat stroller thing,” he teases, and she smacks him in the stomach before dragging him into the house by his belt loop.


	11. July

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In July, Maria spends time with her friends, bonds with an unexpected visitor, covers a hearing for Phil, and becomes a mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for nongraphic and mostly vague descriptions of birth.
> 
> Thanks as always to my lovely beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who keep me honest (and keep my typos from running too rampant).

“I’m not saying she hates prosecuting the high-level felonies, because god forbid I put words in her mouth,” Pepper says, slouching back against the arm of the couch. “And I’m not implying that there’s something in the world that she’s bad at, because—”

“She’ll strangle you in the dead of night with her mad Russian ninja skills?” Darcy asks. Next to her, Peggy chokes on a swig of her beer.

Pepper rolls her eyes, but a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth as she reaches for her wine glass. “All I know is that if we end up on vacation before Phil’s back from his impromptu sabbatical, it is _not_ my fault.” She pauses. “Either that, or it’s because I’m on the run from the law after murdering my girlfriend.”

She punctuates the comment with a tiny shrug, her voice as dry as ever, and she only treats them to a proper smile after everyone in the room starts laughing. They’re louder than the regular beat of summer rain and the distant rumble of thunder outside, and for the first time all day, Maria stretches out her legs and relaxes.

Rufus the Rhubarb stretches with her, his tiny elbows digging in, and she rubs a hand over the bottom of her belly as she reaches for her iced tea.

With the windows open and the television playing one of the three hundred reality competitions at a barely there volume, Maria’s living room is about the furthest thing from their usual bar—except, of course, for the food. Jane and Darcy’d kicked her out of the kitchen for a nap hours before Pepper and Peggy arrived, and now, the spread on the coffee table shows their good works. There’s three kinds of homemade dip, a batch of Bucky’s chicken wings (marinated by the man himself to prevent revealing his secret recipe), the most amazing hummus that Maria’s ever tasted, and an enormous fruit plate. “Hand cut,” Darcy’d reported as she’d settled the tray on the table. “And every knife stroke was a hearsay exception.”

“I’m starting to hate hearsay for her,” Jane’d chimed in, and she’d handed Maria an iced tea while she’d laughed.

Maria’s on her third or four iced tea, her feet propped up on a kitchen chair and her mostly empty plate balanced on the high swell of her giant stomach as Pepper continues to rant about Natasha’s hatred of the cases she’s helping cover on Maria’s behalf. Maria’s not actually sure how the conversation’d even started—she’d waddled to the bathroom and returned midway through Pepper’s tirade—but it’s comforting to talk about something other than babies. Or childbirth. Or pregnancy.

Because as tired as Maria is in general, she’s ten times more tired of talking about her swollen ankles and weirdly lumpy chest. She’ll save the body horror and the sleepless worry for when she’s sweating through her sheets next to her snoring boyfriend, thank you.

Pepper, who’d claimed a spot on the floor the second she’d arrived and who still looks boneless and comfortable in her yoga pants and t-shirt, rolls her head back against the arm of the couch and closes her eyes. “At this rate,” she admits, “she might drive me crazier than Tony.”

Peggy whips her head around so fast that she almost upends a bowl of salsa. She jabs Pepper in the arm with her naked tortilla chip. “If you his name,” she warns, “he will somehow hear you and immediately appear to drive you mad.”

Jane rolls her eyes. “He’s not Beetlejuice, Peggy.”

“Are you certain about that?” Peggy retorts, and Pepper promptly hides her smirk behind her wine glass. Peggy half-glares at her. “He once materialized at my desk the _instant_ he heard me utter the words ‘third’ and ‘date’ in the same sentence. He either has supernatural hearing of some kind, or he’s bugged the whole office.”

“It’s bugged,” Darcy and Pepper decide in the very same instant, and Maria snorts into her iced tea when they celebrate their agreement with an unsubtle fist bump.

Peggy scowls at them, and Maria waits until she’s drowned her momentary wrath in a swig of beer before she shrugs. “For what it’s worth,” she tells Pepper, “I’ve been trying to hand the brunt of my cases off to Steve. Save Natasha for whatever Phil can’t reschedule or postpone.”

Darcy stops sucking wing sauce off her thumb to narrow her eyes. “Is that because of Natasha’s foul mood, or because of that amazing new suit Bucky bought him as a birthday present?” Her best friend heaves a sigh, and she throws up her hands. “Hey, I’m a woman with eyes. I’d be worried if I wasn’t looking.”

“And as a fellow woman with eyes, I can confirm that it’s not only because of Natasha’s mood,” Maria tacks on, and grins at Darcy’s surprised bark of laughter.

Jane wrinkles her nose like she wants to disapprove—and, Maria thinks, like she’s never tipped her head sideways to study Barton’s ass in those fitted gray slacks of his—but she also hides her smile behind her own glass. There’s another rumble of something like thunder outside, closer than the last few, and it’s only when the front door interrupts Darcy’s latest rant about bar prep that Maria realizes that she actually heard Jasper’s car. 

“Sorry, sorry, I know it’s girls’ night,” he calls once the door’s slammed shut behind him, and Maria waves off the knowing smirks that immediately bloom over her friends’ faces. By the time she’s levered herself up off the chair (a pretty herculean task at this point, thanks to Rufus), Jasper’s already in the living room. There’s rain clinging to his t-shirt and skin, but he glistens in the lamp light and smells like a cool summer breeze when he leans in to kiss her on the cheek.

Darcy snickers.

Maria flips her off behind Jasper’s back.

And Peggy proves once and for all that Maria really needs better friends by asking, “Is that an overnight bag, Mister Sitwell, or are you just happy to see us?”

Predictably, Jasper bursts out laughing at the horrible joke, and he ignores Maria’s groan to grin at all four of her friends. “Little known fact, but Maria kicks you out of bed if you don’t change your socks more than twice a week. And since there’s about to be a kid living in the spare bedroom—”

“And whose fault is that, again?” Maria demands, and the asshole actually winks at her like he’d purposely lobbed her the joke in the first place. She rolls her eyes at him, but he just slings an arm around her middle and presses his still-damp nose into her hair. She shoves at his shoulder. “Go away,” she says, no heat or even bare-bones frustration in her tone. “You can unpack while we talk about you behind your back.”

“Just a normal girls’ night, from the sound of it.” He kisses her on the temple, a feather-light touch that sparks a funny little flutter in her chest. “Holler if you need me. Or if you want further proof that I’m at least twice the man Thor is.”

“In that case, don’t hold your breath,” Maria instructs, but she runs her hand down his arm as he steps away.

In a rare show of self-restraint—or, Maria thinks ruefully, in a rare show of preparation—her friends wait until she’s lowered herself back into her chair to beam at her like they’ve collectively won the lottery. She sighs. “Let me guess. We’re cavity-inducing, disgusting balls of mush who should follow the solemn teachings of Beyoncé and ‘put a ring on it.’”

Peggy and Pepper exchange uncertain glances, and Jane’s brow furrows. “Who told you to follow the— What?” Jane asks. Her tone’s about as bewildered as her face.

“Solemn teachings of Beyoncé,” Darcy reports. Jane blinks at her, and she shrugs. “It’s Wade’s new thing. When he wore out YOLO, he decided to try on WWBD. It escalated from there.”

Peggy frowns. “And you dated him voluntarily?”

“Desperate times,” Darcy replies lightly, and salutes Peggy with her half-empty beer bottle. Pepper shakes her head like she’s confused how she landed these friends—a question Maria asks herself on a daily basis—but Darcy cuts off any potential complaint by swiveling around and pointing her bottle in Maria’s general direction. “When are you asking him to move in, anyway?”

Maria raises her eyebrows. “Wade Wilson?”

“No, Sitwell.” She tries to defeat the swimming feeling in the pit of her stomach by sipping her iced tea, but Darcy just swings her legs up onto the coffee table. “You know there’s a pool, right? Tony started it all of ten minutes after you announced about the bun in your oven. There’s birthday and weight of the kid, but also all the other good stuff: when you and Sitwell’ll move in together, when you’ll tie the knot, when one of you’ll murder the other with a machete—”

“It’s actually the last column of his spreadsheet,” Pepper confirms solemnly, and Maria snorts a laugh. 

Darcy rolls her eyes. “My point,” she presses, “is that I don’t have a dog in like two-thirds of the fights, but I stand to win a _ton_ of green if you ask him to move in before the end of next week. And since you’re generally such a good friend . . . ”

She waggles her eyebrows meaningfully, and Jane sighs. “Darcy—”

“Hey, you don’t get to disapprove when you clean up if she waits until she goes into labor.” Jane’s face immediately flushes bright red, and Peggy cackles. Darcy disregards both of them to flop back against the couch cushions. “Just think about it,” she counsels. “Next Friday. Maybe serve him a fancy dinner of hot sauce and whatever other home remedies are supposed to help induce labor before you sweep him off his feet.”

Maria purses her lips and stares down at her half-full glass of iced tea. “And if I don’t ask him to move in?” she asks after a few seconds.

“Then Stark himself pockets the winnings,” Peggy replies, “and absolutely no one wants to deal with _that_ particular ego trip.”

They’re all still laughing at that—or maybe just at the way Peggy’d toasted the space between them as she said it—when the front door bangs open and Natasha storms in. She’s dressed in her usual weekend jeans and sleeveless shirt and soaked to the bone, and she barely steps out of her squelching-wet sneakers before striding up to Pepper and stealing her wine glass right out of her hand. There’s several long stripes of ink smeared down the side of her arm, her wet hair’s messy, and Maria’s pretty sure there’s at least three highlighters shoved in her back pocket.

She hands the glass back to her girlfriend before declaring, “The next time Fury offers me more responsibility, remind me to ask him whether that responsibility includes prosecuting a contested civil forfeiture.”

“Good day of trial prep, then?” Darcy asks with a grin, and the only thing that keeps Natasha from storming back _out_ of the house is Pepper pulling her down to join her on the living room floor. 

A few hours later, after her friends are long gone and the distant rumble of thunder’s morphed into the kind of summer storm that rattles the windowpanes, Maria rolls onto her side in bed. Next to her, Jasper’s squinting at his cell phone, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he ponders his next gambit in Words with Friends. She studies him for a few long seconds—the familiar, easy slouch of his shoulders, the crease between his eyes when he frowns, the way he drums his fingertips against the side of his phone—but the longer she watches, the more this weird, tight feeling swells in her chest. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly, but it’s warm and full, like she’s gulped down too much hot tea and is still working to catch her breath.

She props her head up on an arm. “Jasper?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you bet anything in Stark’s baby pool?”

He’s flicking through his letters when she asks, arranging and rearranging the little yellow tiles, but he stills the instant she finishes the question. He keeps his eyes on the screen, his face careful and calculating, but Maria recognizes the way his jaw twitches nervously. For a few seconds, they engage in a sort of emotional chicken, one where they barely bother breathing just in case the other one notices.

Finally, though, he plays the word _hover_ and exits out of the game. “Maybe a couple bucks, sure,” he admits, shrugging. “Figured I at least needed to try for birthdate and weight, right? The more personal stuff, though—”

“Nothing about when I’d ask you to move in?” He snaps his mouth shut almost immediately, and his throat bobs in the sudden flash of light from the storm outside. “I don’t care if you did, but I want to know—”

“I guessed maybe a week after,” he answers, and the quiet uncertainty in his voice—the worry, really—wraps spindly fingers around Maria’s heart. He glances down at her, and this time, the nervousness crawls across his expression. “I didn’t want to assume anything, but I’m already here all the damn time anyway, and with how intense a newborn is, I just—” He shrugs and shakes his head. “I figured after a week of feedings, diapers, and no sleep, you’d want permanent backup. Or at least until he’s through teething.” 

She snorts a little at that, and he grins down at her, a tiny, endearing grin that squeezes her heart in a whole new way. She smiles back, her free hand reaching up to cup his cheek and chin, and he tips down to kiss her like he’s waited a lifetime. Her thumb trails over his stubble, his hand curves around the swell of her belly, and for a moment, everything’s absolutely perfect.

When she murmurs _okay_ against his mouth, he pulls back a few inches and frowns. “Okay what?” 

She grins. “Okay, I’ll ask you a week after Rufus shows up,” she replies, and kisses the shock right off his ridiculous face.

 

==

 

It’s just after seven-thirty on the hottest night in the history of the universe when Maria opens her front door and freezes like a blast of winter’s just punched her in the face.

On her front porch, Adelina Sitwell smiles and holds up a white box. “I brought lemon cake,” she says, her laugh lines bunching. “When I was pregnant with Jasper and his brother Nico, I always wanted the same lemon cake. I thought you might feel the same way.”

Despite the tension that runs through her whole body, Maria forces a smile. “Why don’t you come in?” she suggests, and holds the door open for Jasper’s mother.

The house is an unmitigated disaster thanks both to the impending baby and Jasper’s insane work schedule—he’s served more subpoenas this week than in the last two months, never mind the missing mother he tracked down for Bruce—and Maria feels heat crawl up her neck as she leads Adelina past the living room and into the kitchen. There’s baby clothes all over the place, all freshly washed and still smelling of fabric softener, and Maria almost tosses an apology over her shoulder before she realizes that the other woman’s disappeared.

Maria finds her hovering over the half-full laundry basket with a tiny green onesie in her hands. There’s a dragon on the front, and Maria snorts a laugh as she walks over. “Our one friend tells this story about a weird Norse dragon _thing_ every chance he gets. He figured the baby needed his own bilgesnipe.”

Adelina frowns as she glances over. “It’s called a bilgesnipe?”

“That one, probably not. But the one Thor talks about? Huge, scaly, big antlers.” Maria shrugs slightly. “I think he tried to come as close to that as possible.”

“It’s very cute,” Adelina says, but there’s something soft and almost hesitant caught in the back of her voice. She folds the onesie carefully before adding it to the teetering pile of clean outfits, and for a moment, she just surveys the tornado-style disaster area of onesies, towels, socks, and other tiny baby things. “I sent all of my old hand-me-downs home with Lisbeta after Eric came along,” she says quietly. “I had wanted to save some of it—pass it out between all four of them, like keepsakes—but Lizzie had three babies before Andrea even had her first, and by then . . . ” She shakes her head as she trails off, her eyes drifting back toward Maria. “It is very hard, sometimes, to know what each of your children need.”

Maria almost smiles. “Pretty sure my dad’d say the same about raising me and my brothers.” Adelina’s face brightens slightly at that, her eyes still sweeping over all of Walter the Mini Watermelon’s things. Maria purses her lips. “Look, I know you’re probably here for Jasper,” she says after a beat, “but he’s out with his friends tonight. Sort of his last hurrah before we start getting impatient for the baby to show up. If you want me to call him—”

“I didn’t come for Jasper.” The absolute certainty in Adelina’s voice catches Maria off guard, but the other woman—the unflappable force of nature, according to Jasper—simply shrugs at her. “We barely spoke to each other at the baby shower, and Jasper isn’t very good at calling home just to talk. I decided today that if I wanted to talk to you before the baby came, I would have to come down and do it myself.”

“With cake,” Maria says, eyebrows raised.

Adelina’s eyes dance when she grins. “With homemade lemon cake,” she corrects, and Maria actually laughs. 

Maria hardly steps into the kitchen before the other woman steers her into a chair and refuses to let her stand. She awkwardly swings the swollen blobs formerly known as her feet and ankles up onto another seat and settles back, watching as Adelina bustles around the room. Within a few minutes, she’s poured two enormous glasses of iced tea, started a kettle of hot water to brew more, and is slicing the cake into precise, even wedges. She hums while she works, almost like she’s forgotten that Maria’s in the room, and Maria can’t help her smile.

She’d tried talking to Adelina at the baby shower a few weeks earlier, of course, but Jasper’s mother had spent most her time flitting between their friends, introducing herself to everyone and staying in each conversation just long enough for everyone to remark how much they’d enjoyed her company. She’d beamed at Maria from across the room a hundred different times, though, and kissed her on both cheeks before leaving for the night. “A vote of approval if I’ve ever seen one,” Jasper’d muttered later, and he’d rolled his eyes when Maria’d accused him of parent-related jealousy.

No, everything Maria’d learned about Adelina Sitwell that day—her warm laugh, her dedication to her seven (soon to be eight) grandchildren, her top-secret recipe for empanadas she refused to share with anyone—arrived second-hand from her hilarious daughters. 

And they’d told so many other stories about growing up in their loud, energetic Irish-Honduran household that at one point, Maria’d wondered if she could go into labor by laughing too hard.

“Sorry,” she says as Adelina bustles over to the table with their snacks, but when she moves to swing her legs back onto the floor, the other woman waves her off. She scoops the last of Maria’s current case folders off the chair across from her and settles down. It’s strange to think of someone passing out two plates, two forks, and two glasses with ruthless efficiency, but somehow, that’s the only way to describe the quick flicks of Adelina’s wrists. 

Maria shakes her head, and Adelina arches an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Maria says. “I was just imagining dinners at the Sitwell household back when you had four kids running around.”

Adelina smirks. “When I had four children to set the table and tell me who fed their broccoli to the dog,” she replies, and Maria almost chokes on her first mouthful of iced tea.

Apart from when Maria moans aloud at her first mouthful of cake, the conversation’s remarkably _normal_. They drift casually from topic to topic, discussing everything from Adelina’s long career as a bank teller and all of Maria’s college odd jobs, and nothing about their interaction feels stilted or forced. Twice, Maria catches herself bracing for some sort of sitcom mother-in-law interrogation—like Adelina’s harboring a whole line of questions about breast-feeding or cloth diapers—but instead, the other woman only ever asks about Maria as a person. Her upbringing, her family, her interests, her non-work hobbies—

“Because if you’re like Jasper,” she says with a sigh, “your first, second, and third favorite hobbies are work.”

—and her long-term goals. Not even goals for motherhood, but goals for life, like she realizes that the impending watermelon baby is really just one small piece of Maria’s whole.

When she says this while Adelina brews the fresh jug of iced tea, the other woman laughs. “My mother’s mother, my _abuela_ , she would have had many thoughts on mothers who do not stay home with their children. But my mother was the one who pushed my father to come to this country. She wanted my sister and me to have a better education. A life where we could do more than raise our children.” She shrugs slightly before she slides the pitcher of tea into the refrigerator. “Not that I appreciated her plans until I was much, much older.”

Maria blinks. “Really?”

Adelina grins. “As my grandson would say: you have no idea.” Maia grins, and Adelina rewards her by bringing over another piece of cake. Maria feigns disinterest for less than ten seconds before digging in. “My parents were good people,” Adelina says after a few more seconds, “but my sister and I, we were teenagers when they moved us to this country. Can you imagine? Moving halfway across the world, starting over, knowing no one.” She shakes her head. “It felt like they’d turned my life upside-down only for themselves.”

Maria huffs out a breath. “Pretty sure that’s the exact conversation I had with my dad every time he transferred,” she admits.

“But you at least knew the language. The culture.” Adelina leans back in her seat, her fingers loosely gripping her glass. “I realize now I was unfair, but in those days? I resented them. Told them every day that I’d move back to Honduras. Live with my _abuela_ , be near my friends.”

“But?” 

“But I met Maximillian Sitwell three days into American high school, and everything changed.”

There’s something rueful in her tone, and Maria raises her eyebrows. “Sounds like love at first sight.”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Adelina immediately retorts, grinning.. “I could not stand the American boys, and Max? He was the worst of all of them. Very sure of himself. Cock of the walk.” She winks. “Every time we saw each other in class, I thought, ‘You are just another boy with slick hair and a letter jacket.’ But I was much better than him in calculus, and after a few weeks, he asked me to tutor him. When I refused, he made a deal: if I would teach him, he would feed me.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “That sounds way too much like your son.”

Adelina beams at her. “Where do you think he learned to feed a woman so well?” she asks, and Maria laughs. She abandons her cake to lean back and watch Adelina as she continues, her expression soft and a little wistful. “He never cooked on his own, but he would take me out. To a diner, or to the bowling alley—where the pizza was very good—and we would eat while I helped him study. Calculus first, then history or science. Sometimes, he helped me with my English, but I usually ended up ahead of him in that class, too.” Maria snorts a laugh, and Adelina’s shoulders soften. “I stopped disliking him so much, after long enough,” she says, “and at the end of the school year, he asked me on a date.”

Warmth blooms in the pit of Maria’s stomach as she imagines a fidgety, nervous, Jasper-shaped teenage boy bashfully asking his calculus tutor out on an actual date. She shakes it off before asking, “You said yes?”

“No,” Adelina says, shaking her head slightly. When Maria raises her eyebrows in surprise, though, the other woman waves it away. “I wanted to move back to Honduras, remember? Wanted to like nothing about this place. But when I told my sister—Jasper’s Tia Carmen, who is worse than my Andrea when it comes to uninvited advice from your sister—she told me, ‘Adelina, the American boys won’t chase you. If you want to date him, you should date him.’” She smiles gently. “When our parents went to bed that night, I snuck down to the kitchen and called him. And we were together from that summer until— Well. By now, you know until when.”

She lifts her glass as the end of her sentence trails away into thin air, and for a moment, all that’s left between them is that heavy knowledge: that Adelina Sitwell fell in love with her husband as a teenager and stayed with him until death literally pulled them apart. Maria loses a few seconds imagining that fate for her father—a fate where her mother stuck around for longer than nine years, where she stayed and retired to Florida with him, two golfing peas in a pod—but she discovers too quickly that she can’t really picture her father _with_ anyone. Her father’s a lone wolf, a man who’d rather spend his morning reading the newspaper front to back than chatting with the neighbors, a stone not even his children can squeeze blood from.

As a child and a teenager, Maria’d modeled herself after him, molding herself into something steel-plated and fearless. She’d built herself into suits of armor, bricked up walls and dug deep trenches, and all to hide from the same pain that’d turned her father hard. But now, as an adult, she wonders whether all her father’s character flaws are actually just inborn traits, a result of his nature and not of her mother leaving.

And then, she wonders if somewhere, over her moats and under her steel, she’s less like her father and more like Adelina Sitwell. Someone who can fall in love over diner food and a shared workload. Someone who can believe in concepts like _until death do us part._

Phil Coulson’d discovered that person deep inside himself. Tony, too. 

Maria’s heart clenches when she realizes that maybe, deep down, she’s been in that very place all this time, since even before she’d spent a weekend in a cabin and ended up pregnant.

Across the table, Adelina twists her glass in her hands. “When the doctors called that day, told us about Max’s cancer, Nico was a sophomore at Rice. The girls both had babies, new families. But my Jasper . . . ” She draws in a long breath, but she smiles, too. “My Jasper had spent his whole life up to that day hearing his loud Honduran family and his loud Irish family both talk about taking care of your parents. Of your whole family, because they are the ones who come first. Before careers, before ambition, before anything else in the world. And before I even knew it, he left everything to come back to us. To help me, and Max . . . ” 

When she raises her head, her eyes are damp and beautiful, and Maria’s breath sticks in her throat. “All my children loved their father,” she says, “but sometimes, I think Jasper loved him the most. And everything I loved most about Max, it somehow is reflected in Jasper: his kind heart, his love of food—” Maria grins reflexively, and Adelina smiles back. “—his desire to always do good. To always make us proud, even when making us proud required the hardest work. Like joining the police—or like leaving it to care for Max, in the end.”

Maria nods a little, unsure what she’s supposed to say—unsure that there’s anything to fill the void, really, except the thick feeling in her throat and lungs—but when she finally wets her lips to speak, Adelina reaches across the table. Her hands are small but warm, the hands of a woman who counted money all day and still managed to run a household, hands that cradled four children and seven grandchildren, hands that baked a cake for an almost-stranger. She covers Maria’s wrist with both of them, squeezing tight, and Maria reflexively lays her own hand on top. For a long moment, there’s silence except for their breathing, labored and sticky with a sorrow Maria’s not sure she’s allowed to share.

But she feels it anyway, especially when Adelina smiles. “We all lost something when Max died,” she says softly, “but Jasper— I think he lost more than his father. Call it what you want—his footing, his faith—but something disappeared from him that day, and I spent eight years afraid he’d never find it again. And then, one day, he told me about you.”

Her voice is so warm—and worse, so incredibly certain—that Maria spends a second struggling to breathe. She turns away, blinking against the wet heat that prickles against her eyelids, and tries to ignore the way her heart climbs high into her throat. Adelina squeezes her wrist again, a touch as gentle and sure as her voice, and Maria only moves her hand when the baby stretches at just the right angle to steal the last of her breath.

Adelina blinks and draws back slightly. “He’s not—”

“He’s just letting me know he’s tall like my side of the family,” Maria promises, and relief immediately washes over the other woman’s face. She rubs her side gently (not that Walter’s left himself any wiggle room) as she studies Adelina’s features: her laugh lines, her worry lines, her wavy hair, her kind eyes.

Maria smiles.

“For what it’s worth,” she says after what feels like a few years too long, “I think Jasper might’ve helped me find some of that, too.”

Adelina smiles back. “That’s all a mother ever wants to hear about the person her son loves,” she replies, and squeezes Maria’s wrist again.

 

==

 

“The big concern’s really how his criminal history will affect sentencing.” Sweat clings to Phil’s hairline as he closes his car trunk, and he wipes it away with the side of his hand as he slouches lazily against the car. “I originally tried to play hardball, back before he switched defense attorneys, but Heimdall refused to budge. Fandral, on the other hand— Well, let’s just say he’s trying to be reasonable, this time around.”

Maria glances up from the case file that she’s spent the last few minutes flipping through. “First time for everything, then?”

He snorts. “You’re telling me. The last time I prosecuted against him, I thought it’d come to blows.” When she rolls her eyes, he treats her to a tiny, crooked smile. “Either way, he realizes that Conroy’s up a very dirty creek without a paddle, and he’s willing to meet us halfway on the plea deal. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour tomorrow.”

Maria skims the defendant’s criminal history report one last time before she nods. A humid breeze surges around her, slipping its sticky fingers under her clothes and leaving her skin feeling slimy and uncomfortable, and she fans herself with the file for a few seconds. The attempt to cool down fails miserably, and she scowls as she tosses it into her car through the open window. “A thousand easy halfway points between your house and mine, and you pick the judicial complex parking lot on the hottest night of the year,” she complains. 

Phil flashes her a rueful grin. “I like to keep you on your toes.”

“At this point, I’m not even sure I still have toes.”

He laughs and shakes his head, but she ignores both gestures to walk over and lean against his car with him. The sky’s just started transitioning from dusky pink and orange to indigo, and if she squints, she swears she can map out a handful of stars dotting the darkest corner of the horizon. When she stops studying the sky to glance over, she finds that Phil’s staring at his sneakers and the asphalt under them, his t-shirt damp around the neck and his lips rolled into a hard line.

She waits a few more seconds before asking, “How’s Barney doing?”

Phil huffs out a hard breath. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” he asks, his head tipping back while he shakes it again. “Clint’s barely spoken to him in the last week and a half, and god knows he’s not returning my phone calls. Meanwhile, we’re stuck in a quagmire of red tape and—” His voice shudders without breaking, and he scrubs a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he says after a beat. “It’s just been a long couple weeks.”

Maria nods slightly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really, no.”

“Do you _need_ to?”

Phil releases a breathy little half-laugh at the question. “Thanks, Dr. Hill, but what I need right now is something I’m probably not going to get.” 

She narrows her eyes at him, sure that her face’s darkened against her will like a thundercloud, but all her momentary frustration sloughs away the second Phil glances back over. Because in the thousand emotions that play across his face, she most clearly notices worry and defeat, and that’s just not the Phil she’s used to.

She bumps her shoulder against his, and he smiles lightly as she bumps her back. “What about you?” he asks after a beat, and he gestures to her middle when she blinks at him. “Your due date was technically, what, yesterday? I’m surprised you’re not waiting at the clerk’s office to file his eviction notice and get him out of there.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “I wish. At this point, my doctor thinks he’ll be at least another week, which led to a horrifying conversation with the receptionist about some babies ‘cooking’ longer.” He only stops snickering when she digs her elbow (lightly) into his ribs. “I feel like I’m dragging a bowling ball around in front of me during the day, and I sweat through the sheets at night whether I sleep or not. I’m practically the monster in a Lovecraft novel.”

Phil tips his head to one side. “I think I’ve actually read that one.”

“And if you don’t try to make some horrible pun out of the word Cthulhu, you’ll live to make that joke again.” He bites back a grin, his laugh lines crinkling, and she wrinkles her nose at him. For a moment, they share the relative silence of the summer evening and listen as the last couple kids in the nearby park play an echoing game of Red Rover. It’s only when Maria catches herself rubbing a hand over her belly that she glances back over at him. “It’s okay for this to feel surreal, right?” she asks him. “Because the closer we get to his actual arrival, the more I think I’m about to wake up from the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”

The corner of Phil’s mouth twitches. “Weirder than the one where Clint was a circus performer?”

Maria almost laughs. “Maybe not weirder, but at least there’s no purple thongs in this version of reality.” Phil hums quietly, his expression softening into something sweet and almost wistful, and Maria groans. “And I definitely don’t want to know what you just started thinking about.”

Phil flashes her a wicked grin. “Duly noted.” She considers glaring at him—warning him against any stories involving Clint’s underwear and purple glitter (a highlight of her Circus Clint dream)—until he leans his elbows against the closed trunk. “For what it’s worth,” he says after a beat, “I think it’d be weirder if this whole situation didn’t feel surreal. You, Jasper, a relationship, a _baby_?” He shrugs. “From what you’ve said over the last few years—or repeated like a broken record, depending on who you ask—your life’s veered hard off the beaten path.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You start quoting Robert Frost, and I’m leaving,” she warns.

He chuckles. “No Frost. Clint’s the poet in the family, not me.” He tips his head back, his face tilted toward the darkening sky, and shrugs again. “I think it’s easy to get to a place where you start dividing your ambitions up into categories. Some, you’ve already accomplished. Some others, you’re working toward them. And then, a handful end up apart from all of the others, relegated to the _probably too late_ pile. And you convince yourself that they’re not important—that they’re pipe dreams, things you never really wanted in the first place—and force yourself to forget about them.”

Maria rolls her lips together. “Until?”

“Usually, until those dreams dust themselves off and show up at your doorstep in the form of handsome new traffic attorneys, or unplanned pregnancies, or even Barney Barton.” She chuckles at that, shaking her head, and Phil smiles as he glances over at her. “I know you’re just going to roll your eyes and lecture me for sounding like your older brother, but here’s the truth: despite all your misgivings and your worries, I think you’re going to be good at this. A good partner to Jasper, a good mom to your son.” 

An unexpected rush of heat floods her face, and she turns away to avoid the warmth in his voice—and worse, in his eyes. “You keep this up,” she warns, “and I’ll have to confront you about all the stuff in your _probably too late_ pile that you’ll end up being good at.”

Phil laughs, but for some reason, it’s a lot colder and softer than Maria expects it to be. “After the last few weeks,” he replies, “I think that pile’s better left untouched.”

She twists to glance over at him again—either to confront him or comfort him, she’s just not sure which one—but the second their eyes meet, he shakes his head. “I don’t want this to be about me and my problems,” he tells her. “Not tonight. Not when you’re days from having your baby.”

Maria snorts. “At the rate we’re going, you’ll have all your issues worked out before he even _tries_ to free himself,” she returns, but she also loops her arm in Phil’s and leans in close. 

 

==

 

Maria only really recognizes the cramps for what they are when she’s sitting in Judge Hammersmith’s courtroom first thing Monday morning. 

The cramps start the night before, uninvited twinges in her lower back that force her to stop what she’s doing and fight against the rising tide of discomfort. Twice, she’s bending to load the dishwasher, and she white-knuckles the edge of the countertop as she breathes through the— Well, it’s not pain as much as it’s a quick one-two punch of tightness that curls fingers around her lungs and squeezes, but either way, it _sucks_.

When she complains to Jasper as he brushes his teeth, he laughs. “You spent the whole weekend running around like a crazy person,” he reminds her, waving off her scowl. “The fact you made it ‘til now without complaining means I lost the _Maria runs out of steam_ bet by a pretty huge margin.”

She punishes him for his shit-eating grin by smacking him hard on the upper arm. “Smugness is officially your least attractive quality.” He snickers, and she rolls her eyes. “Besides, I didn’t run around. I just—”

“Did three loads of laundry, dragged my ass around the grocery store like you wanted to run some kind of grocery marathon, reorganized the nursery closet for the third time this month, and cooked three different meals?” He shrugs. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that you’re feeling like a human again, but I don’t think there’s a woman in the world who’s still _that_ energetic at ten days past her due date.”

He leans down to wash his face—the man wears socks for three days straight but still moisturizes more often than Stark, somehow—and Maria presses her lips together. Another cramp twitches through her lower back, but this one’s mild. She spends a minute running through all her weekend activities before she sighs. “You’re probably right,” she admits, glancing over at Jasper. “I probably overdid it, and my body’s just reminding me who’s boss.”

He grins. “Yeah: the kid. Jerking you around like a marionette on a string. He’s probably got foot pedals in there to control the cramps, and you’re just at his mercy.” 

When she raises her hand like she plans on smacking him again, he catches her by the wrist and pulls her close. There’s no way for them to hug properly thanks to her enormously swollen middle, but he snakes an arm around the top of it and leans in to kiss her on the corner of the mouth. He smells like forest and sky, thanks mostly to his face wash, and Maria tips her head to kiss him back. There’s something especially comforting about his touch right now, and she sinks against him. 

(She also curses her nesting instinct, but only gently.)

“Seriously, though, are you okay?” he asks once she’s no longer pressing her face into the crook of his neck, and she stops stroking her thumb along his jaw to frown at him. “I know you’re practically the iron woman, but if something’s wrong—”

“They’re just cramps,” Maria promises. Jasper purses his lips, and she snorts as she smiles. “You don’t need to worry about me or my watermelon overlord, I promise.”

He grins. “I think you mean watermelon puppet master,” he corrects, and laughs when she rolls her eyes at him.

But Maria tosses and turns all night, her back still spasming at irregular intervals and occasionally twinging hard enough that she jerks awake from a light, dozing sleep. At one point when she’s especially delirious with exhaustion and sticky with sweat from the July humidity (which seeps into the house despite the closed windows and the persistent hum of the air conditioner), she rubs the bottom of her belly and wonders whether she’s in labor.

Except the cramps feel nothing like her false alarm contractions, and at her regular Thursday morning doctor’s appointment, Hussain’d warned that the baby’d probably stick around for another week. “He’s comfortable, and you’re barely starting to dilate,” she’d said with a shrug as she’d snapped off her gloves. “If we’re still at the same point on Tuesday, we might start talking about forcing him out.”

Maria’d frowned. “Can we just evict him right now?” 

Her doctor’d laughed. “You said yourself you didn’t want to schedule your birth ‘like a soccer mom in training,’” she’d retorted, and Maria’d rolled her eyes at the woman’s spot-on impression of Maria’s voice. “Welcome to the consequence of that decision.”

Walking in circles around her house at three a.m. on Monday morning, Maria curses that consequence. She also curses Doctor Hussain, Jasper Sitwell, and their unnamed watermelon child. “This is your fault,” she grumbles at one point, a hand spread across her belly.

The watermelon stretches, the cramp spreads from her lower back around to what feels like her hips and thighs, and she actually swears aloud as she half-sits, half-falls onto the couch.

She sleeps sitting up, one foot propped up on the coffee table, because her body’s receptive to that and only that position.

“After the hearing this morning, I’m driving you to the doctor,” Jasper warns her in the kitchen a few hours later, Maria rolls her eyes as she reaches for her bag. “I’m not joking. If you’re pacing around in the middle of the night and sleeping like a pretzel—”

“A weird, malformed pretzel, maybe.”

“—something’s obviously wrong.” She reaches for her mug, desperate to finish her last two swigs of tea, but he slides it out of her reach. “You can’t shrug this off, Maria. Okay?”

Something more than his usual bullheaded stubbornness seeps into his tone—affection, yes, but also worry and a hint of hurt—and Maria glances away as she shrugs on her blazer. She’s in a maternity dress that reminds her mostly of a very stylish muumuu, and she hates everything about it. Worse, she hates that the cramps are still radiating outward, occasional hard spasms that leave her gritting her teeth.

When she looks back at Jasper, he’s watching her, his lips pursed.

She sighs. “Since it’s already my last hearing, sure. We’ll swing by the clinic.”

Luckily, Jasper hides his victory grin behind his own coffee mug—and then, in the sweet little kiss he presses to her temple before he leads her out to the car.

For the first half-hour at the office, Maria prints off the plea agreement for her hearing, answers a few e-mails, and completely ignores the fact that the cramps are stronger, more regular, and more painful than even twelve hours earlier.

And then, at just after nine in the morning, one hits her hard enough that she knows _exactly_ what’s happening.

The spike of pain catches her off guard, and she slaps counsel table harder than necessary in her attempt to keep her breath (and her expression) even and calm. The intern seated next to her—one of the new crop, a girl with stick-straight hair and the cutest collection of summer dresses Maria’s ever encountered—jumps in surprise, but Maria staves off her question with a quick shake of her head. Over at the defense table, Fandral spares her one brief, uncertain glance before turning back to his client.

Figures.

She breathes through the pain as best she can, her teeth grinding and her fingers curling against the tabletop, and when it finally passes, she all but flops back into her chair. Next to her, the intern swallows thickly. “Are you okay?” she asks.

Maria forces herself to nod. “I’m fine,” she lies, and she’s about to grab her phone and text Jasper when Judge Hammersmith walks in. 

For the first time in her life, standing feels like a monumental task, but Maria somehow manages to drag herself to her feet as Hammersmith’s court reporter calls the hearing to order. As usual, Hammersmith takes his sweet time arranging his files in front of him before he slides into his chair, and Maria tries very hard to keep from glancing impatiently at her watch. Worse, a quick scan of the courtroom reveals that the only person in the gallery is a sleepy-looking courtroom deputy in the back row.

Maria wonders for a moment whether fainting mid-sentence might postpone the hearing.

She’s still considering this as a viable option when Hammersmith shuffles his papers around one last time and says, “Be seated. I understand we’re here today for a plea colloquy in 14-0311C, the State versus Kellan Green. Appearances, please?”

Maria curses under her breath as she levers herself back out of her chair, acutely aware of the touch of sweat that’s beading along her brow and the looming threat of another hard cramp. “The State appears by Chief Assistant District Attorney Maria Hill, filling in for Phil Coulson,” she recites.

Fandral buttons his jacket as he springs to his feet. Maria swears he even _bounces_. “Mister Kellan Green appears in person and with counsel, and he is ready to proceed.”

“Very good,” Hammersmith replies. His brow furrows slightly when he glances over at counsel table and discovers that Maria’s still standing—because hell if she’s sitting back down only to stand again—but he hides it behind a polite smile. “How is the State proceeding today, Miss Hill?”

She nods slightly. “Your Honor, Mister Green has agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charges of robbery and petit theft in exchange for a sentencing recommendation of—”

The next cramp hits right in the middle of Maria’s sentence, a hard clench of muscles that she’s not even sure she knew existed, and within a half-second, she’s doubled over and fighting for breath again. The intern next to her releases a bleat of surprise and rockets to her feet, but Maria barely notices over the rush of her own heartbeat in her ears. The spasm twists and contorts, and in her head, she’s forced to call it exactly what it is:

A contraction.

A contraction, because she’s in labor.

“Fuck,” she grinds out, and digs her fingernails into counsel table.

The sleepy security officer jumps out of his gallery seat and urgently barks something into his radio, and Maria realizes in one glorious moment of clarity that Rhodey’s on the other end of the call. She twists to glance over at the panicked intern, her breathing still hard and irregular, and it’s only through sheer force of will that her voice stays even when she commands, “Grab my phone out of my bag and call Jasper.”

The intern’s eyes widen. “But I don’t—”

“Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘know how to use a smart phone,’ you need to call Jasper Sitwell and tell him that I’m in labor.” All the color drains out of the girl’s face, and Maria— 

Well, Maria’s not necessarily proud of the fact that she slaps the table hard enough that it echoes, but the girl jerks out of her shock enough to clamber under the table and start rooting through Maria’s bag.

By the time she’s called Jasper—or, maybe more appropriately, by the time Maria’s recovered enough to stagger toward the hallway thanks in part to Fandral’s strong arm around her middle—Rhodey and two other security officers are waiting at the door to the courtroom. She immediately rolls her eyes. “I’m not dying, you know.”

“Tell that to your panicked boyfriend,” Rhodey returns, and Maria pretends for a moment that she’s not grateful when he offers his arms. “Jasper’s bringing the car around to the front of the building. You want a police escort, you just say—”

“I can still kill you while I’m in labor,” Maria promises him, and there’s something incredibly soothing about his laugh as he leads her down the hallway.

What’s less soothing, of course, is when the next contraction (which hits her in the lobby of the judicial complex, ten feet from the door and surrounded strangers) comes complete with a weird sort of popping sensation—and a slow, spreading wet in Maria’s underwear. “Fuck,” she says, and she’s just about to dig her fingernails into Rhodey’s arm when a strong, familiar hand pries hers away.

“I’ve got you,” Jasper says, his face so open—and so quietly petrified—that Maria tears up almost immediately. 

Someday, she thinks, she’ll be able to tell Jasper how grateful she is for his unflappable calm and bottomless faith.

In the moment, though, she clutches his hands like her life depends on it and hides her face in his shoulder. “Having this kid was a horrible fucking idea,” she says, because it’s grumbling against his shirt or screaming out in pain.

He snorts. “Always knew you’d murmur sweet nothings all the way through labor,” he murmurs close to her ear—and then, walks her carefully out to the car.

 

==

 

After hours of screaming, cursing, walking circles around a birthing suite, and threatening Jasper’s life in many creative ways, Baby Boy Sitwell arrives just after 11:30 p.m. on July 28. He squalls and fusses the second he’s brought into the world, all thrashing arms and frog-kicking legs, and the nurses clock him in at a full eight-and-a-half pounds. He’s red-faced and olive-skinned, complete with pouty little lips and a mess of fine, dark hair, and the second he settles into Maria’s grip, she falls endlessly, helplessly in love.

She’s tear-streaked, sweaty, panting, and _empty_ , but somehow, she’s ridiculously happy, too. 

From the way Jasper keeps burying his face in her rat’s nest of hair, she’s pretty sure she’s not alone in that.

“He looks like you,” she says to Jasper at some point after the baby’s born, her face still wet and her voice choked. When she glances up, Jasper smiles at her like he’s the sunrise, and his fingers slide through her hair. He gazes down at the two of them, his face brimming with the kind of love and affection she’s always assumed only happened in fairy tales, and she swallows around the lump that rises in her throat. She studies Jasper for a moment before she adds, “Well, except for the hair, obviously.”

He snorts and rolls his eyes, but his grin never dims. “And here, I thought we might have a moment.”

She tips her head back against his shoulder. “There’s a lot of moments in our future,” she points out, and she’s pretty sure he only kisses her forehead to hide his wet eyes.

 

==

 

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning after the baby’s born, Maria tips her head in Jasper’s direction and asks, “Your dad’s name was Max, right?”

In the chair next to the bed, Jasper stills. He’s in the pajamas they’d shoved into their shared hospital bag almost three weeks earlier, but like Maria, he’s barely dozed in the last four or five hours. Really, the only one of them who’s slept at all since the nurses retreated is the baby. He’s in Jasper’s arms now, bundled up like a baby-shaped burrito and complete with a tiny blue cap, and the second he realizes that his dad’s no longer rocking him, he grumbles and squirms. Jasper starts a little, almost like he’s forgotten about him entirely, and immediately returns to the slow, soothing rocking motion that successfully tricked the kid into sleeping once before.

Maria watches them for a long time, her son and her— For the first time in the last seven or eight months, boyfriend feels like too insignificant a term.

Her partner, she thinks, and she likes the way it sounds.

She’s still smiling to herself when Jasper swallows. “Maximillian,” he answers, his voice shaky. “Nobody but my grandmother ever called him that, though, because god knows—” 

“Max Sitwell,” Maria says, and Jasper rolls his lips together instead of finishing his sentence. Maria weighs the name on her tongue for a few seconds, listening to it fade through the room, and she imagines shouting it down the street on a hot summer day seven or eight years in the future. In his father’s arms, the baby stretches and yawns, and she’s not sure whether she smiles at that alone or at the way Jasper grins down at him. Either way, her chest tightens.

“He’s a Max,” she decides. “Maybe not a Maximillian, but definitely a Max.”

Jasper nods, but he keeps his head tipped down toward the baby. Their son, Maria thinks, and the word leaves her feeling a little swimmy and off-balance. “And you’re okay with Sitwell?” he asks after a beat. She frowns slightly, and he steals a glance at her before he shrugs. “You did a whole lot of hard work today, never mind over the last couple months. If it were me, I’m pretty sure I’d want to brand the kid with my last name. Prove I survived the experience.”

“Oh, we’re throwing a Hill somewhere in the middle of all that,” Maria promises him, and he snorts softly before he finally raises his head all the way. His eyes are dark and damp, and she can’t help reaching out to brush fingers against the side of his face. He tips into her touch, and for a moment, there’s no conversation except for the baby’s tiny, content noises. “But Hill or no Hill, you’re his dad,” she adds after a little while, “and if I have to suffer through eighteen years of stress and worry, I’m sure as hell bringing you down with me.”

Jasper grins damply. “I’d go willingly no matter what you name him, you know.”

“And I will use that power against you before he’s even a month old,” Maria replies, and smiles when he laughs.

 

==

 

Two days later, as Jasper’s puttering around the kitchen and humming to himself, Maria strokes her fingers along the curve of Max’s tiny cheek. He’s dozing lightly in her arms, already tired from his big morning of eating and burping, and completely oblivious to his father’s attempts to scrounge up something for lunch. Exhausted and sore as Maria is—because apparently, the horrors of having a newborn start literally as soon as they arrive—she can still smile at the sun filtering in through the drapes and Jasper—

She frowns as he wanders into the room with a couple glasses of water and some sandwiches. “Are you humming Taylor Swift?” she asks. 

He grins. “I can neither confirm nor deny that I knew you were trouble when you walked in,” he replies, and laughs when she flings the spit-up rag at his retreating back.

Maria realizes that, eventually, she’ll need to admit aloud just how warm and happy she feels here, in this place, with Jasper and Max.

But for right now, she plans to enjoy every minute of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a new MPU posting schedule this weekend. It will contain both good and bad news. Hopefully, you will forgive me for the bad (and be excited for the good).
> 
> Also, I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter. I got super sick yesterday, and I am just now coming out the other side. I wanted badly to post this, but I mostly could not function. Your patience is super appreciated.


	12. August

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> October: the tenth month in the year, retaining its name from the Latin for “eight.” Also, a month when Jasper Sitwell risks some small part of himself (not that he’ll admit it) and Maria Hill acts on an impulse she’s usually better at controlling.
> 
> January: the first month of the year, taking its name from Janus, the god of doorways. Also, a month when literally everything changes.
> 
> But then again, Janus is also the god of beginnings.
> 
> In August, Jasper prepares Max for his first work party by explaining some universal truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my absolutely magnificent beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, for seeing me through yet another story. I could not do this without the both of them. And thanks as always to _you_ , my amazing readers, for constantly being part of this journey. Like I always say: I never planned on writing more than a single story. I never expected a sprawling universe. And I could not have gotten here without each and every one of you.

“She’s going to make us late,” Jasper remarks. “Your big coming out party, first chance to meet the assholes we hang out with for eight hours a day, and your mom’s gonna hold us up.”

“His mom’s going to end your life if you don’t shut up,” Maria calls from the nursery, and Jasper grins.

Max stares up at him, his eyes huge and full of just enough wonder that Jasper sometimes thinks the kid might be clairvoyant or some shit, and when Jasper bounces him a little, he thrashes his tiny baby arms. In the middle of the night, Max Hill Sitwell is a nightmare child—he screams for his feedings but then fights Maria about it, like he wants company more than his third dinner—but during the day, he’s the happiest baby on the planet. He loves his pacifier, tummy time, and gurgling at absolutely nothing. 

And on Monday, he turns a full month old.

Even now, standing in a sunny patch in the bedroom and rocking Max gently, Jasper struggles to wrap his head around the last year of his life, one that started with a quick screw and ended up here, sharing a room and a kid with Maria Hill. Maria, who smells like baby powder and milk as much as her shampoo these days, who grudgingly crawls out of bed every night to comfort their screaming hellion before bringing him into their room for his feeding (and thrusting him at Jasper for the burping-and-vomit portion of the program). Maria, who smiles like the sunlight that filters into the bedroom and reminds Jasper every day just how fucking lucky he is.

He’s at the tipping point of bursting out in some embarrassing _I’m going to love you for the rest of our damn lives_ stream of word vomit. He just hopes nobody besides Maria’s around to hear it.

He almost tells Max about that—because Max is happy during the daylight hours, sure, but he’s especially happy when you’re talking to him and waiting for him to gurgle in response—but Maria wanders into the bedroom before he’s collected all his thoughts. She’s still in her pajamas (one of Jasper’s t-shirts and a pair of ratty sleep shorts with lightning bolts on them) and her hair’s in a loose ponytail, but she’s a sight for sore eyes.

“You want to see the hottest lady invited Steve and Bucky’s housewarming?” Jasper asks Max, and the kid releases a delighted noise when he spots his mom. Maria rolls her eyes, but she smiles, too. “Hey, I’m just telling him like it is.”

“Your so-called hottest lady hasn’t showered in two days and smells like spit-up. Pretty sure that’s an instant disqualification.” Max jerks his arms and releases a weird cooing noise, and Maria raises her eyebrows. “See? Our infant agrees with me.”

“Our infant’s still impressed by bright colors and changes in light, so what’s he know?” She snorts at him and shakes her head, but Jasper still catches the way color rises in her cheeks. He allows her about ten seconds of tickling Max’s chubby stomach before he leans in and kisses her on the corner of her mouth. “You smell like baby and sunshine,” he informs her, “but I get the shower thing. Besides, I need to finish his briefing.”

Maria frowns. “Briefing?”

“To prepare him for meeting everybody in one fell swoop.” She blinks at him, her brow furrowing, and he sighs. “You want him to go in totally blind, not knowing a Barnes from an Odinson? He needs to know what we’re dealing with here.”

She rolls her eyes. “I think parenthood’s taken the last of your sanity.”

“Probably,” Jasper admits, and he grins at her little huff of breath. He waits until she wanders over to the dresser before turning back to Max. “Where’d I leave off?” he asks, and Max wriggles at his thoughtful face like he already understands the expression. Jasper knows it’s probably gas, but it’s still cute as fuck. “I think I stopped at Stark and Banner. Remember? Nutball ex-scientists turned lawyers, armed with a legion of kids. Stark’s no problem—he’ll drag out the holy water just to fend you off—but his husband’s gonna want cuddles. Probably the second we walk in, now that I think about it. We might need to disguise you as a sack of flour to keep him away.”

“You’re not disguising our baby,” Maria warns over her shoulder.

Jasper grins. “You’ve met Banner, right?”

There’s a long couple seconds of silence between them before Maria rolls her lips together. “On second thought,” she says, “we can hide him in a pillow case.”

He laughs. “And I’m the one with all the bad ideas?” he retorts, and she shrugs him off as she resumes her assault on what’s left of their clean clothes. Given that they live with a four-week-old vomit machine, it’s pretty slim pickings. “Anyway,” he continues, rocking the kid again, “Banner’s pretty ruthless when it comes to baby cuddles. Between him and his girl child, we might never see or hear from you again.”

Now in the bathroom doorway, Maria groans and thumps her head against the doorframe. “I forgot about Amy,” she laments, and Jasper frowns at exactly how defeated she sounds. “She sent a card over here the day Bruce brought that casserole, and I promised him I’d write her a little note back. She wants to share it with her Girl Scout troop.”

Jasper quirks an eyebrow. “For what, their ‘new mother’ achievement patch?”

“No idea, but we need to stop and grab a card on our way over there.” He starts to roll his eyes almost involuntarily, but she just jabs a finger in his direction. “No. No comments on my dramatically reduced punctuality. I’m a new mom, and my baby’s in a complicated love-hate relationship with my breasts. I’m allowed to be scattered for at least another week.”

Jasper immediately raises his free hand. “Never said you’re not.”

“No, but you thought it,” she accuses, and he knows he’s smirking through his shrug from the way she scowls at him. “Next time I decide I need an unplanned baby, I’m sleeping with . . . Uh . . . ”

She hesitates, her expression tightening slightly, and Jasper rolls his lips together to hold back a snicker. “You forgot that we’re out of single, male co-workers, didn’t you?”

“Actually, I was wondering whether you’re the only straight man in the county,” she replies, and grins when Jasper bursts out laughing.

He shoos her into the bathroom after that, and as soon as the showerhead splashes to life, he starts to walk Max around the room. The kid’s staring up at him, his eyes big and active, but Jasper knows he’s about fifteen minutes away from crashing out hard. He’s beautiful when he sleeps, his long eyelashes resting on his soft, round cheeks, and he sighs when Jasper strokes his thumb over his tiny chin. 

According to the doctor, he’s a strapping baby, but he still feels tiny. Breakable, Jasper thinks, and he cradles him a little closer because of it.

“You came out of nowhere, you know that?” he asks, and Max rewards him by smacking his lips and blinking slowly. “Your mom and I would’ve danced around each other for a hundred years, circles inside of circles or whatever, and all of a sudden, you showed up. This tiny person we never planned on, and you changed everything.” He smoothes a couple fingers over Max’s hairline, and Max closes his eyes. “I know it’s hard to tell, because we’re not always the best at whispering sweet nothings at one another, but your mom and I— I can’t say for sure it’ll last forever, but it’s the real deal. I love her. I think even if we fall apart, I’ll probably love her for the rest of my life, because she’s one half of you.”

He glances outside as he says it, out into the bright August sun, and for a moment, he swears he can smell the wind from last October, taste the crisp fall air. Or maybe he just wants to do all that, to return to those couple days and know this time around that they’ll be some of his best.

Max stretches and curls closer, and he smiles down at his son. 

“Here’s the thing your mom doesn’t realize,” he says quietly. “Way back in February, before we really talked about you, I bought her a ring. I figured, depending on how our talks all went, I should have it in my arsenal. Be ready to ask, because she deserved better than a guy she screwed around with. She deserved a husband.” He shakes his head slightly. “And one of these days, after you stop hating your nighttime feedings and after she feels like a whole person again, I’m going to propose. And she’ll flip her shit, maybe even tell me no, but I figure as long as I cap the whole thing off by telling her how much I love her, I might just win her over.”

Max sighs again, this time in his sleep, and Jasper’s allowed one half-second to enjoy his sweet little face before a familiar voice asks, “You’re going to propose?”

Someday, way in the future, Jasper’ll pride himself on whirling around without either waking or dropping the baby, but that day’s about fifteen years down the road. Because the second he hears Maria—the second the words hit his ears—he swears his blood runs cold. He jerks around hard and fast, and within a heartbeat, they’re staring one another down: Maria in her towel and underwear, Jasper with his heart hammering in his throat, and both of them totally speechless.

There’s something unreadable on Maria’s face, an expression that straddles the line between shock and a dozen other emotions, and Jasper gulps around his fear before blurting, “You’re supposed to be in the shower.”

“I forgot to grab clean underwear,” she replies. Her tone’s completely, almost eerily even. “You bought me a ring?”

Jasper draws in a shaky breath. “I—”

“Before you even knew whether I wanted to keep the baby, you bought me a ring?”

There’s a hint of surprise lapping at her voice, and when her fingers flex a little around her towel, he shrugs. “Well, yeah,” he says—or at least, it’s what he assumes he says, because his pulse is louder than three marching bands. “I mean, if you want me to return it, I can, but I figured that with us living together and the tiny baby, you might not throw it in my face and—”

“I wouldn’t throw it in your face,” she confirms, and all at once, the nervousness drops out of Jasper and leaves him feeling light as air. He blinks exactly once before he grins at her, but Maria—

Proof positive that Maria Hill’s not the robotic, heartless jackass that half the county’s criminal defendants think she is: she blushes pink, tucks her hair behind her ear, and glances at the floor.

Her skin’s pale and soft, her hair’s dark and wavy, and Jasper thanks every god he’s ever heard of for introducing him to his beautiful girlfriend.

His face warms without his permission, and his grin grows. “You saying that you’d say yes?” he teases.

She huffs and rolls her eyes. “You keep that up, and I might change my mind,” she retorts—but when she raises her head, she’s smiling. Her gaze sweeps over the whole picture—Jasper in his crappy weekend clothes, their son sleeping against his chest, the sunlight filling the room until he thinks it might just burst from all the warmth—before she swallows. “But for the record,” she adds, her voice sticky, “I’d say yes.”

Jasper hides the way his stomach ties itself in the biggest fucking knot of his life by shrugging. “I guess I’ll keep that in mind,” he says nonchalantly.

Maria snorts at him. “You’re such an asshole,” she mutters, but she treats him to one brief glance of her smile before she ducks back into the bathroom. 

In another ten minutes, after she showers, she’ll remember her need for clean underwear and bellow at Jasper about it.

But until then, Jasper beams to himself and watches their son sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you don't follow me on [tumblr](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com): I am moving in about a month. In order to make sure that I don't end up making promises I can't keep, the MPU's going to go on a brief hiatus until after I'm in the new house. Read all about this, and the additional story I've added to the docket, [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/119130576407/at-least-the-latest-mpu-posting-schedule). 
> 
> I will endeavor to reply to comments this weekend. I wanted to do it last weekend, but I was just too sick to function.
> 
> Thanks again to each and every one of you. I constantly brag about how great my readers are. I will never stop bragging about it. Because you guys are amazing, patient, and kind, and I could not do what I do without you.
> 
> In July, we return to Clint and Phil--and, in a way, to where this whole series began. Until then, my dear readers!


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